Novartis to buy gene-therapy company targeting eye condition

The Swiss healthcare giant said Wednesday it would make an upfront payment of $800 million, and potential additional payments of up to $700 million, provided Gyroscope hits particular development milestones.

The acquisition will hand Novartis an experimental gene therapy for geographic atrophy, a form of age-related macular degeneration that can lead to permanent vision loss. The treatment, known as GT005, is designed to increase the production of a protein, called CFI, that is thought to reduce damaging inflammation. That treatment is in mid-stage clinical trials. Gyroscope, which was founded five years ago by London-based life sciences investor Syncona Ltd., also has some earlier-stage projects aimed at other eye diseases.

The deal is the largest in a recent streak of acquisitions by Novartis that add expertise on gene therapies targeting the eye. Last year, Novartis acquired Cambridge, Mass.-based Vedere Bio Inc. in a deal worth up to $280 million. Earlier this year, it bought Swiss startup Arctos Medical for an undisclosed sum. Both groups were in the early stages of developing technologies aimed at restoring vision by instructing eye cells to make light-sensing proteins.

Gene therapies have been a hot area for drug development in recent years because of their potential to be one-time treatments for certain difficult-to-manage conditions. They work by ferrying genes into cells, where the genes instruct those cells to make a protein that addresses the disease. Once introduced, the gene continues to provide those instructions.

Still, the handful of gene therapies that are already available are expensive. Those include Novartis’s Zolgensma, which carries a list price of $2 million. Companies that sell them say the cost is justified because they only need to be given once. Zolgensma, which treats a devastating muscle-wasting condition in infants called spinal muscular atrophy, has been shown to stop progression of the disease when given early enough.

Novartis also sells a gene therapy for an inherited eye disease that causes blindness. That therapy, called Luxturna, was developed by a company called Spark Therapeutics, which licensed the non-U.S. rights to Novartis in 2018. Spark has since been acquired by Roche Holding AG.

The deal for Gyroscope is Novartis’s first acquisition since it agreed to sell a large stake in Roche back to its crosstown rival for $20.7 billion.

Novartis has already said it would use some of the proceeds to buy back $15 billion worth of shares, and analysts have said they expect the company to use the remainder to build up its pipeline through deals