Ep. 329 - Novartis' $12B Avidity Buy. Plus: Base Editors

Novartis’ biggest deal in more than a decade gives the Swiss pharma three programs for muscular dystrophies that are close to the finish line. On the latest BioCentury This Week podcast, BioCentury’s analysts discuss the $12 billion deal for Avidity in the context of Novartis’ recent acquisitions and the antibody-oligonucleotide conjugate platform it is gaining.The team dives into RNA versus DNA modalities, noting antisense and siRNA approaches appear to be gaining traction with major pharmas as traditional gene therapy and gene editing approaches hit rocky times. Still, they note hopeful progress among base editing therapies given the promising early track records of over a dozen base editors in the clinic. They also discuss BioCentury’s conversation with base editing inventor David Liu; Alkermes’ $2.1 billion acquisition of Avadel; and β-catenin data from Parabilis. This episode of BioCentury This Week is sponsored by Evotec.View full story: https://www.biocentury.com/article/657412#AntibodyOligonucleotideConjugates #RNAtherapeutics #BaseEditing #MuscularDystrophy #WntPathway #BetaCatenin #Orexin2Receptor #PrecisionMedicine00:01 - Sponsor Message: Evotec 02:04 - 12th China Healthcare Summit08:11 - Novartis' $12B Deal16:58 - Alkermes M&A20:01 - David Liu Base Editing25:02 - Parabilis' DataTo submit a question to BioCentury’s editors, email the BioCentury This Week team at [email protected] us by sending a text