Novartis is opening a new frontier in its collaboration with Voyager Therapeutics, paying $15 million to take up its option on a novel capsid for use in a rare neurological disease gene therapy program.
Voyager is granting Novartis the license as part of the deal the companies entered into in March 2022. Novartis paid $54 million to launch the alliance and handed Voyager another $25 million when it opted into two out of three targets one year later. The agreement gave Novartis the option to add up to two extra targets to the original deal.
Thursday, Voyager said Novartis has licensed another capsid. As well as the upfront payment, the biotech is in line to receive up to $305 million in development, regulatory and commercial milestone payments. Tiered mid- to high-single-digit royalties complete the package.
Novartis paid Voyager $100 million at the start of 2024 for rights to gene therapies against Huntington’s disease and spinal muscular atrophy. The latest option brings the total number of gene therapy programs in the Novartis-Voyager collaboration up to five. The partners are yet to disclose the indications targeted by the three capsids licensed under the 2022 deal.
The programs are built on Voyager’s RNA-based screening platform for discovering adeno-associated virus capsids that penetrate the blood-brain barrier and head to the central nervous system. AstraZeneca’s Alexion and Sangamo Therapeutics also have deals covering the technology.
Landing the deals has helped Voyager recover from the lows it hit after a period in which AbbVie and Sanofi walked away from alliances and the FDA put a Huntington’s trial on hold.
Voyager ended June with $371 million, enough to see it through multiple clinical data readouts into 2027. The sequence of data drops includes Alzheimer’s disease results that are due in the first half of 2025.