Schrödinger surges on Novartis collaboration agreement

(Sharecast News) - Schrödinger surged on Tuesday after it announced a $2.5bn research collaboration and license agreement with Novartis to advance multiple development candidates into the Swiss pharma firm's portfolio for further development. Under the terms of the agreement, Novartis will pay Schrödinger $150m upfront and Schrödinger will also be eligible to receive up to $892m in research, development and regulatory milestone payments.

In addition, Schrödinger is eligible for up to $1.38bn in commercial milestones and tiered mid single-digit to low double-digit royalties on net sales of each product commercialised by Novartis.

The US scientific software and biotech company also announced an expanded three-year software agreement that substantially increases Novartis's access to Schrödinger's "computational predictive modelling technology and enterprise informatics platform".

This expanded access enables Novartis to deploy Schrödinger's full suite of drug discovery technologies at "industry-leading scale" across its research sites.

Karen Akinsanya, president of R&D, therapeutics at Schrödinger, said: "We are delighted to work with Novartis and leverage their strong expertise to jointly advance several of Schrödinger's existing non-oncology discovery programs as well as collaborate on additional programs.

"This builds on more than a decade of productive collaborations with pharmaceutical partners, and companies we have co-founded, and is a testament to the track record of our world-class therapeutics team."

At 1448, Schrödinger shares were up 14% at $22.23.