Orionis Biosciences, a privately held, clinical-stage life sciences company pioneering proximity-induced therapeutic modalities, tl announced a multi-year collaboration with Novartis to discover and design molecular glue drugs for challenging therapeutic targets across multiple disease areas. The collaboration expands the existing relationship between the companies and reflects a shared commitment to unlock the full value of induced proximity approaches in drug development.
Under the terms of the agreement, Novartis and Orionis will use Orionis’s Allo-Glue™ platform, together with its AI-driven discovery engine, to accelerate target and ligase profiling and molecular glue optimization. These integrated capabilities enable the systematic discovery of small molecule glues that modulate therapeutic targets through induced proximity mechanisms. Orionis will receive an upfront payment of USD 40 million and is eligible to receive research, development, and commercial milestone payments of up to USD 1.4 billion, in addition to tiered royalties on net sales of collaboration products.
“We are proud to renew and expand our collaboration with Novartis. 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.”Niko Kley, Chief Executive Officer of Orionis Biosciences
Molecular glues represent an innovative frontier in medicine, allowing small molecules to reshape protein interfaces and force an interaction between a disease-causing target protein and a cellular disposal mechanism (like an E3 ligase). This approach enables the target protein’s degradation, stabilization, or operational modulation, thereby neutralizing previously “undruggable” pathways responsible for severe disease progression.
Written by: Pragna Biswas
Graphics by: Pramit Hazra
