No­var­tis turns to Sang­amo with a $795M-plus deal aimed at us­ing zinc fin­ger tech for the neu­ro pipeline

When No­var­tis re­cruit­ed Ri­car­do Dol­metsch from Stan­ford to lead its neu­ro­science group, great em­pha­sis was placed on de­cod­ing ge­nomics and the brain cir­cuit­ry to find new break­throughs for the be­lea­guered field. Sev­en years and a failed Frag­ile X ther­a­py lat­er, he has a new tool to go af­ter some of these tar­gets his team has un­earthed.

In a new col­lab­o­ra­tion, No­var­tis is pay­ing Sang­amo Ther­a­peu­tics $75 mil­lion up­front to lever­age zinc fin­ger pro­tein tran­scrip­tion fac­tors in the reg­u­la­tion of three genes ties to autism — a core fo­cus of Dol­metsch’s aca­d­e­m­ic re­search days — in­tel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty and oth­er neu­rode­vel­op­men­tal dis­or­ders. An­oth­er $720 mil­lion in mile­stones are on the ta­ble, along­side a pledge to re­im­burse all of Sang­amo’s re­search work.

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