Orionis Biosciences has significantly expanded its partnership with Novartis, signing a new multi-year collaboration focused on discovering and developing molecular glue drugs for difficult-to-treat targets across multiple diseases.

 

The agreement builds on the companies' existing relationship and underscores growing industry interest in proximity-induced therapeutics, an emerging approach designed to control disease biology by bringing proteins into close proximity.

 

Under the deal, Novartis and Orionis will leverage Orionis's Allo-Glue platform and AI-powered discovery engine to accelerate target identification, ligase profiling, and molecular glue optimization. 

 

The collaboration is aimed at systematically discovering small-molecule therapies capable of modulating previously challenging therapeutic targets through induced proximity mechanisms.

 

Orionis will receive an upfront payment of $40 million and could earn up to $1.4 billion in research, development, and commercial milestone payments, along with tiered royalties on future product sales.

 

“We are proud to renew and expand our collaboration with Novartis,” said Niko Kley, Chief Executive Officer of Orionis Biosciences. “Having such a partner continue to engage deeply with us is a strong validation of the value of our molecular glue platform and the progress we have achieved toward rational and scalable discovery of this emerging drug class.”

 

The partnership comes as Orionis continues to advance its molecular glue discovery capabilities through investments in artificial intelligence and automation technologies.

 

“Our recent advances in AI and robotic automation have accelerated all aspects of molecular glue discovery, from systematic prioritization of productive target–ligase pairs to glue candidate discovery and optimization,” said Riccardo Sabatini, Chief Data Scientist at Orionis Biosciences. 

 

“This is exactly the kind of platform maturity that makes collaborations like this possible.”

 

For Novartis, the expanded alliance provides access to technologies that could broaden the range of biological targets available for future drug development programs.

 

“We are excited to deepen our collaboration with Orionis and to explore the full potential of molecular glue modalities across multiple therapeutic areas,” said John Tallarico, Head of Discovery Sciences at Novartis. 

 

“The Orionis platform offers an opportunity to rapidly uncover and design molecular glue mechanisms, enabling us to expand the horizon of targetable biology for future therapies.”