Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals and Novartis inked a licensing deal Tuesday for an experimental Parkinson's drug, sending Arrowhead stock surging.
Novartis agreed to pay Arrowhead $200 million up front and up to $2 billion in additional milestones, plus royalties on sales to license the preclinical drug, ARO-SNCA.
ARO-SNCA is in laboratory testing as a treatment for Parkinson's disease, but the companies could also test it in other conditions.
Arrowhead Chief Executive Christopher Anzalone called Novartis a "compelling partner" in the central nervous system disorders space. Arrowhead's drugs aim to interrupt specific RNA to half the production of problematic proteins. The platform has shown promise in delivering instructions to the brain.
"The potential translation of these results is upcoming clinical trials would represent an important leap forward for neurodegenerative diseases and gene targets in the CNS (central nervous system) that have been historically difficult to address," Anzalone said in a written statement.
On the stock market today, Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals stock jumped 16.6% to 25.68. Meanwhile, Novartis stock rose a small fraction to 126.64.
Follow Allison Gatlin on X/Twitter at @AGatlin_IBD.
