Novartis’ $12B Avidity buy, David Liu on base editors, and Alkermes M&A — a BioCentury podcast

Plus: Parabilis’ ESMO data

Novartis’ biggest deal in more than a decade gives the Swiss pharma three programs for muscular dystrophies that are close to the finish line. On the latest BioCentury This Week podcast, BioCentury’s analysts discuss the $12 billion deal for Avidity Biosciences Inc. (NASDAQ:RNA) in the context of recent acquisitions by Novartis AG (SIX:NOVN; NYSE:NVS) and the antibody-oligonucleotide conjugate (AOC) platform it is gaining.

The team dives into RNA versus DNA modalities, noting antisense and siRNA approaches appear to be gaining traction with major pharmas as traditional gene therapy and gene editing approaches hit rocky times. Still, they note hopeful progress among base editing therapies given the promising early track records of over a dozen base editors in the clinic.

They also discuss BioCentury’s conversation with base editing inventor David Liu, a professor at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, in which he discusses how recent work by his group could pave the path to treating larger patient populations with base editors.

In a second look at M&A, the analysts discuss how the $2.1 billion acquisition of Avadel Pharmaceuticals plc (NASDAQ:AVDL) and its approved cataplexy therapy Lumryz by  Alkermes plc (NASDAQ:ALKS) should help the biotech build its commercial infrastructure for sleep disorders in advance of a launch of an in-house narcolepsy program and possibly position it for a speedier path to commercial success.

Finally, BioCentury’s analysts look at positive β-catenin data reported by Parabilis Medicines Inc. at the European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress last week.