Build­ing its neu­ro pipeline, No­var­tis antes up $210M cash to buy a biotech part­ner drug­ging 'both fla­vors' of NM­DA

Af­ter J&J and Al­ler­gan shone a bright spot­light on the role of NM­DA re­cep­tors in psy­chi­atric dis­eases, No­var­tis has jumped in with both feet by bag­ging a neu­ro­science part­ner.

Ca­dent Ther­a­peu­tics is get­ting $210 mil­lion up­front and $560 mil­lion in mile­stones tied to its 3-drug pipeline — with in­di­ca­tions span­ning schiz­o­phre­nia and move­ment dis­or­ders.

“The NM­DA re­cep­tor is one of the most im­por­tant tar­gets in the brain, it re­al­ly con­trols neu­ronal func­tion, I would de­scribe it as part of the very nuts and bolts of the ner­vous sys­tem,” Gopi Shanker, the in­ter­im co-head of neu­ro­science at the No­var­tis In­sti­tutes for Bio­Med­ical Re­search, told End­points News. “And so mod­u­la­tion — the right kind of and right amount of mod­u­la­tion — is crit­i­cal to bal­anc­ing ef­fi­ca­cy and safe­ty and his­tor­i­cal­ly it’s been re­al­ly dif­fi­cult de­vel­op­ing safe and ef­fec­tive mod­u­la­tors of the NM­DA re­cep­tor.”

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