Novartis has renewed its focus on Parkinson’s disease through a significant collaboration with Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals, marking another strategic step into neuroscience drug development. The Novartis and Arrowhead deal centers on a preclinical therapy engineered by Arrowhead to silence the genetic instructions for “alpha-synuclein,” a protein linked to Parkinson’s and other neurodegenerative conditions. As part of the agreement, Novartis will pay $200 million upfront to secure an exclusive license to research, develop, manufacture, and commercialize the treatment.
Arrowhead might get additional payments of over $2 billion if the project attains certain development milestones, alongside royalties on resulting products. Under the Novartis and Arrowhead deal, the Swiss pharmaceutical company also has the option to pursue other disease targets beyond Arrowhead’s current pipeline, leveraging the latter’s drug-making technology, which centers around the RNA interference technique.
The two companies intend to finalise the agreement later this year. Once effective, Arrowhead will conduct all necessary preclinical research to meet regulatory standards for advancing the drug into human trials. After that stage, Novartis will assume control, managing the rest of the experiments and potential commercialisation.
“We believe that one way to effectively target core drivers in Parkinson’s and other neurodegenerative diseases requires completely novel approaches to deliver RNA medicines to the brain,” said Fiona Marshall, president of biomedical research at Novartis.
Marshall further highlighted that Arrowhead’s technology demonstrates “great potential to achieve the type of widespread and effective delivery in key brain structures that will be necessary to see the full benefit of RNA medicines in neurodegeneration,”
Parkinson’s remains one of the most complex neurodegenerative conditions for biotech and pharmaceutical leaders to address. A number of prominent therapy initiatives have failed in their development in the clinic, highlighting the difficulty of addressing disease caused by progressive loss of neurons.
