Monte Rosa Therapeutics has announced an agreement to collaborate with Novartis to develop novel degraders for immune-mediated diseases. The agreement is the company’s second with Novartis, in addition to the global exclusive licence agreement for Monte Rosa’s VAV1 degraders including MRT-6160, announced in October 2024.

The agreement announced was structured by the companies to collaborate on accelerating development of degraders for important immune-mediated diseases driven by highly credentialed and difficult-to-drug targets. Under the agreement, Monte Rosa’s scientists will apply their proprietary AI/ML-enabled QuEEN product engine for the discovery and development of degraders to be further developed and commercialised by Novartis.

“We are excited to extend our relationship with Novartis beyond our previously announced VAV1 agreement given the strong progress made to advance MRT-6160 towards initiation of multiple Phase-II studies in immune-mediated diseases. We believe this new agreement further strengthens our relationship with Novartis, a recognised global leader in immune-mediated diseases, and reflects the expansive opportunity in the space for our highly selective and potent MGDs. Our AI/ML-enabled QuEEN product engine continues to generate new insights and opportunities, delivering an expanding pipeline of programmes directed against a breadth of historically undruggable immunology targets. This new collaboration allows us to expedite the development of certain of those programmes with Novartis, leveraging their recognised development and commercialisation capabilities. The agreement further strengthens our financial position, which allows us to progress our wholly-owned programmes, including multiple undisclosed targets in Th1, Th2 and Th17-driven auto-immune conditions, and provides runway beyond multiple anticipated Phase-II readouts for MRT-8102, MRT-6160 and MRT-2359,” said Markus Warmuth, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Monte Rosa Therapeutics.

Under the terms of the agreement, Monte Rosa will receive an upfront payment of USD 120 million. It will also receive payments to maintain the options. In total deal value, Monte Rosa is eligible to receive up to USD 5.7 billion, including upfront, option maintenance, pre-clinical milestone, option exercise and development, regulatory and sales milestone payments across programmes, as well as tiered royalties on global net sales in the high single-to-low double-digit range.

“We are pleased to expand our collaboration with Monte Rosa Therapeutics, building on the strong foundation and progress established through the VAV1 programme. This new agreement underscores our commitment to advance targeted protein degradation as a promising approach to address immune-mediated diseases with high unmet need. We believe Monte Rosa’s QuEEN platform has the potential to uncover new insights in this field. We look forward to work together to translate these insights into transformative therapies for patients,” said Fiona Marshall, PhD, President—Biomedical Research, Novartis.