Avila Therapeutics, Inc., an emerging biotechnology company, has entered into an option agreement with the Novartis Option Fund focused on Avila's advancement of a novel covalent drug programme from Avila's research pipeline in conjunction with an equity investment. The agreement includes upfront and potential milestones payments to Avila totalling over $200 million plus royalties. Avila's covalent drugs offer the potential to treat many serious diseases through a novel mechanism called protein silencing.

"We are excited about the opportunity presented by Avila's innovative approach to the design and development of covalent drugs," said Henry Skinner, managing director of the Novartis Option Fund. "We selected an early programme that validates the Avilomics platform and offers a unique product opportunity for Novartis."

"This relationship both enables us to advance our third program and also underscores the value of our platform to create covalent drugs," said Katrine S Bosley, CEO of Avila Therapeutics. "The agreement is a strong complement to Novartis' equity investment in Avila, and together these steps represent an important evolution in Avila's strategic development. We anticipate establishing a select number of strategic relationships in order to take full advantage of the breadth and depth of the Avilomics platform, and we're very pleased to have Novartis as the first."

With broad applicability across multiple disease areas, the Avilomics platform is Avila's powerful approach to design and develop selective drugs with superior pharmacology.

Avila Therapeutics is developing an innovative and proprietary therapeutic approach to covalent drug development, called 'protein silencing'.