Novartis bets USD 1.9b on Antares' covalent chemistry platform for undruggable cancer targets

Novartis has committed up to USD 1.905 billion to access Boston-based Antares Therapeutics' covalent small molecule discovery engine, in one of the largest upfront payments seen for a pure discovery-stage platform collaboration in oncology this year.

Under the collaboration agreement announced June 24, Antares receives USD 105 million upfront and is eligible for up to USD 1.8 billion in additional option exercise, development, regulatory, and commercial milestones across programs, plus tiered royalties on global net sales reaching the low double-digit percentage range.

Antares will lead all research and apply its proprietary discovery engine to a limited number of historically undruggable oncology targets until Novartis exercises its options on individual programs, at which point Novartis assumes full development and commercialization responsibility. Antares retains rights to advance its wholly owned pipeline in parallel.

Deal context

Antares was spun out of Scorpion Therapeutics following Eli Lilly's acquisition of Scorpion's mutant-selective PI3Kα inhibitor program for up to USD 2.5 billion. The team that discovered that asset using covalent chemistry and hidden binding pocket identification now constitutes Antares, making it a known quantity with validated methodology rather than an unproven platform bet. The company's lead wholly owned program is expected to enter the clinic in 2026, with additional preclinical programs in development.

The platform described by Antares integrates covalent drug discovery expertise — including proprietary screening libraries, chemical proteomics, structure-driven computational chemistry, and a machine-learning suite — to generate highly selective small molecules against targets that have resisted conventional approaches. No specific targets or named candidates were disclosed as part of this collaboration.

The collaboration reflects continued pharmaceutical industry interest in covalent chemistry as a means of expanding the druggable proteome. By targeting transient or previously inaccessible binding pockets, covalent small molecules have produced several high-value oncology assets in recent years, prompting large pharmaceutical companies to seek earlier access to discovery platforms capable of generating first-in-class programs.

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