Novartis bets $7.8B on a Chinese autoimmune drug

Novartis just made a big bet on an unproven drug. On Friday, it agreed to pay China's Abogen Biosciences up to $7.8 billion. The deal covers a new autoimmune therapy. The upfront payment is $575 million. The rest depends on years of future trials. The drug is called ABO2203. It uses mRNA, the same technology behind some COVID vaccines. It makes a patient's own body manufacture the treatment.

The timing says a lot. Novartis paused an autoimmune CAR-T program this summer, per Fierce Biotech. Three patients died in that trial. CAR-T therapies reprogram a patient's immune cells outside the body. Then they're infused back in: powerful, but risky. ABO2203 tries for a similar effect more gently. It tells the body to make the therapy itself, instead of infusing modified cells directly. If it works, it could be safer. Nobody knows yet whether it actually will. The data so far comes from early, small trials.

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Will mRNA-based autoimmune drugs actually pan out? ABO2203 is one of several experimental attempts to treat lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, avoiding CAR-T's infusion risks. Novartis is betting big that one of them works before the bulk of that $7.8 billion ever gets paid out. For now, it's a bet on a platform, not yet a proven drug.