Freshly public BioAge Labs has secured a multi-year partnership with Novartis that focuses on age-related diseases and includes the possibility of up to $550 million in biobucks.
The freshly inked deal comes less than two weeks after BioAge discarded a phase 2 obesity trial and less than three months after the company debuted on the Nasdaq.
Now, Novartis has signed a pact with the California biotech aimed at discovering an undisclosed number of new therapeutic targets, according to a Dec. 18 release. The Swiss pharma will pay BioAge up to $20 million in upfront and research financing, plus up to $530 million in potential milestone payments. Both partners have the right to advance new targets discovered under the deal, with reciprocal success milestones and royalties on the table for each company.
Together, the pair will explore the biological mechanisms underlying conditions related to aging and the benefits exercise can have on this process. The Big Pharma will contribute expertise in exercise biology, while BioAge will provide its human longevity datasets, plus the biotech’s discovery platform.
BioAge’s tech is based on data from human aging cohorts followed for up to 50 years, combined with health records and functional measurements. Using analytics and machine learning techniques, BioAge then detects determinants of a healthy lifespan to drive therapeutic discovery and development.
“By exploring the intersection of human aging biology and the biological drivers of the beneficial effect of physical exercise, we aim to bring forward novel treatment options for diseases related to aging,” Michaela Kneissel, global head of Diseases of Aging and Regenerative (DARe) medicine at Novartis Biomedical Research, said in the release. DARe, which evolved out of the pharma’s musculoskeletal disease unit in 2023, is focused on restoring cell and tissue function tied to diseases of aging.
“The collaboration between Novartis and BioAge underscores the growing recognition that unraveling the biology of aging is a powerful approach to treating disease,” BioAge’s Chief Business Officer and head of brain aging Peng Leong, Ph.D., said in the release. “This collaboration represents a significant opportunity to accelerate our development of a broad portfolio of transformative therapies targeting novel mechanisms identified by our platform, dramatically expanding our therapeutic reach and benefiting patients across multiple indications.”
BioAge made a splash with its $198 million IPO at the end of September, funds that were designed to advance its lead obesity drug and sole clinical-stage candidate, an orally delivered small molecule called azelaprag.
But shortly thereafter, BioAge said it was scrapping its phase 2 weight loss trial that was evaluating the asset in combination with Eli Lilly’s obesity med Zepbound. The move came after 11 cases of liver transaminitis were reported among the 204 subjects enrolled. These patients didn’t have “clinically significant symptoms,” the biotech said at the time.
“We made the difficult decision to discontinue the STRIDES phase 2 study of azelaprag because it became clear that the emerging safety profile of the current doses tested is not consistent with our goal of a best-in-class oral obesity therapy,” BioAge CEO Kristen Fortney, Ph.D., explained at the time.
While the biotech is most recently known for its obesity endeavors, it has been around since 2015. In 2021, BioAge gained exclusive licensing rights to Amgen’s APJ agonist AMG 986 to treat diseases of aging, and the program became the biotech’s lead asset.
BioAge initially planned on studying the candidate—also called BGE-105 and later azelaprag—in muscle aging, with the phase 1b trial enrolling older adults with muscular atrophy. In mid-2024, the biotech turned to the red-hot area of obesity, launching the phase 2 trial of azelaprag and Zepbound as an investigational treatment for older adults.