China's Zonsen Biotech has entered into a global licensing and collaboration agreement with Novartis for an undisclosed peptide-based asset in the radioligand therapy (RLT) field. Under the agreement, Novartis obtains exclusive worldwide rights to the asset and will lead all subsequent development and commercialisation activities. In exchange, Zonsen will receive an upfront payment of USD 50 million and is eligible for future development, regulatory and sales milestone payments, plus tiered royalties on global net sales.

The asset, wholly developed by Zonsen to date, will complement Novartis' existing RLT portfolio. Zonsen, founded in 2017, focuses on discovering and developing novel peptide therapeutics for oncology and cardiovascular metabolic diseases, leveraging its proprietary peptide library and discovery platform. The company's platform supports multiple peptide-based modalities, including peptide-radionuclide conjugates, peptide-oligonucleotide conjugates and peptide-drug conjugates.

PharmCube's NextBiopharm® database shows that this is Zonsen's fifth licensing deal and the second one with Big Pharma. Click here to request a free trial for NextBiopharm®.