Novartis Acquires CoStim Pharmaceuticals

Swiss drug giant Novartis has bought Cambridge, Mass.-based CoStim Pharmaceuticals in a bid to gain access to CoStim’s cancer immunotherapy platform. No financial terms of the acquisition were disclosed.

The purchase of CoStim acts on an increasing body of evidence making clear that the immune system plays a crucial role in controlling cancer, Novartis said Monday.

Novartis is already working in tandem with the University of Pennsylvania, developing chimeric antigen receptor technology (CART) to which CoStim will add novel immune-modulating targets. This gives Novartis the potential to combine checkpoint inhibitor programs with targeted therapies and CART into Novartis’ pipeline, said Novartis spokeswoman Mariellen Gallagher.

CoStim also adds technology through late-discovery stage immunotherapy programs directed at such targets as PD-1, Novartis claimed. Other drugmakers, however, are also hot on the tails of the PD-1 market, with Merck and Amgen having agreed earlier this month to test Merck’s MK-3475 PD-1 antibody alongside Amgen’s talimogene laherparepvec. Bristol-Myers Squibb is also testing PD-1 antibodies in 25 studies across multiple types of cancers. — Lena Freund

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