• Artios to receive $20 million up-front payment in addition to near term research funding to support the collaboration.
• Artios eligible to receive up to $1.3 billion in discovery, development, regulatory and sales-based milestones in addition to royalty payments.

LONDON, 07 April 2021: Arix Bioscience plc ("Arix", LSE: ARIX) a global venture capital company focused on investing in and building breakthrough biotech companies, notes that its portfolio company, Artios Pharma Limited ("Artios"), a leading DNA Damage Response (DDR) company exploiting synthetic lethality to develop a broad pipeline of precision medicines for the treatment of cancer, today announced a global research collaboration with Novartis to discover and validate next generation DDR targets to enhance Novartis’ Radioligand Therapies (RLT).

Under the three-year collaboration, Artios and Novartis will perform target discovery and validation, and Novartis will select up to three exclusive DDR targets, and receive worldwide rights on these targets to be utilised with its RLTs. Novartis will make an up-front payment of $20 million and provide near term research funding to support the collaboration. Artios will be eligible to receive discovery, development, regulatory and sales-based milestones, in addition to royalty payments on net sales of products commercialised by Novartis. The collaboration does not include Artios’ lead programmes, ART0380, which is currently in clinical development, and ART4215, a first-in-class Pol Theta inhibitor.

Arix is the largest shareholder in Artios, with a 12.4% ownership stake on a fully diluted basis.

"This collaboration will exploit Artios’ innovative discovery technology to build a pipeline of RLT combination therapies that can change the current paradigm in cancer treatment. Following the recent multi-billion dollar deal with Merck, the collaboration with Novartis further strengthens Artios’ leadership in the field of DDR. We are proud to continue supporting Artios as it becomes a clinical-stage precision medicine company.”

Naseem Amin Executive Chairman at Arix and Artios Board Director