STAT+: Pharmalittle: We’re reading about a Novartis acquisition, Republicans backing clinical trial diversity, and more
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- Novartis is paying $1.1 billion upfront to acquire London-based Myricx Bio, accelerating its push into antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) cancer treatment development.
- Myricx Bio is designing cancer treatments using N-myristoyltransferase inhibitor (NMTi) payloads — a different approach from existing ADCs that Novartis says could tackle resistance and limitations of current payloads, potentially broadening use across multiple tumor types.
- Novartis has been slower than some peers to enter the ADC space, making the Myricx deal a notable catch-up move into a fast-growing oncology modality.
- The Republican-controlled House passed an FDA funding bill largely along party lines, accompanied by a report directing the agency to continue implementing a law requiring companies to submit plans for diversifying clinical trials.
- The accompanying report is not legally binding but tells FDA officials what congressional appropriators expect, creating a legislative counterweight to the Trump administration's broader attack on DEI-related policies that had caught clinical trials in their crosshairs.
Why it matters: Novartis's $1.1 billion bet on Myricx Bio gives the Swiss drugmaker — a relative latecomer to ADCs — access to NMTi-payload technology aimed at overcoming resistance in existing ADC approaches. On the policy side, House Republicans' inclusion of clinical trial diversity language in an FDA funding report offers a congressional counterweight to the administration's DEI rollbacks, even though the report itself carries no legal force.
