Novart's $280 million acquisition of Vedere Bio continues to add code to gene therapy

On October 29th Novartic announced the $280 million acquisition of Vedere Bio in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in a deal that expands Novart's advantage in gene and cell therapy and will provide Vedere Bio with a full range of gene therapy platforms for eye diseases.
under the terms of the deal, Novart will pay Vedere Bio $150 million in advance payments and subsequent milestone payments of up to $130 million, both totalling $280 million.
Novart's layout on the gene therapy platform also includes Novart's $8.7 billion acquisition of Illinois-based AveXis in April 2018, primarily for AVXS-101, the company's candidate gene therapy for spinal muscular dystrophy, and the company's gene therapy platform.
the drug was approved as Zolgensma in May 2019 (Read: Novartic Spinal Muscular Dystrophy Gene Therapy Releases New Data Expected to Be Approved in May).
's technology platform in partnership with Vedere Bio includes photorecent proteins that can be delivered to retinal cells, as well as adeno-related virus (AAV) delivery vectors for glass cavity injections.
inherited retinal malnutrition (IRDs) are characterized by loss of photoresist cells and impaired vision.
affected more than 2 million people worldwide, eventually leading to total blindness.
existing treatments are focused on interventions in one of more than 250 genes associated with IRDs.
advantage of these two technologies is that they can be widely used to treat vision loss caused by photorepynor death, as well as multiple inherited retinal malnutrition.
technology was developed jointly by the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine.
Venture Bio was founded in June 2019 in the Atlas start-up incubator and subsequently received a $21 million round of A financing and started operations in LabCentral, Massachusetts.
, however, shortly before the acquisition, a number of early-stage vision repair and vision protection-related assets were divested into a new entity, Vedere Bio II, Inc.
Vedere Bio II is fully independent of Novaral and Vedere Bio, and its main goal is to focus on unsopheded allergies and develop new vision recovery and vision protection drugs.
early investors in Vedere Bio, including investors such as Atlas Venture, Mission Bio Capital and the American Anti-Blind Foundation, will fund it.
Novaral itself reports that it has three main projects in gene therapy: AAV, inlay antigen-treated T-cells (CAR-Ts) and CRISPR.
acquisition of the ophthalmology sector and the 2018 acquisition of AveXis, now known as Novirtis Gene Therapies, will further strengthen its research and development capabilities and market share in gene therapy.
addition, Novarma's ophthalmology division is ambitious, and since March last year, Novarma has spun off its Alcon subsidiary. Clearly focus on drug research and development, and shift the focus to three mainstream directions in the field of ophthalmology: brolucizumab, a drug for wet geriatric macular degeneration .Relevant Reading: Treatment of wet AMD, Novartic ophthalmology new drug Beovu approved by the European Union! Luxturna, which was licensed for products other than the U.S. in 2018, is exploring digital solutions for ophthalmology care, and there are likely to be some mergers and acquisitions in the future.