Novartis goes big for neuroscience with $12B deal for late-stage dystrophy biotech Avidity

(Oct 22, 2025) by James Waldron .

Almost a year after buying Kate Therapeutics, Novartis has scooped up another San Diego-based muscle dystrophy biotech in one of the biggest acquisitions of 2025 so far.

The Swiss pharma is paying $12 billion for Avidity Biosciences and its three late-stage antibody-oligonucleotide conjugates. Novartis is justifying the hefty price tag by claiming the deal will “unlock multi-billion-dollar opportunities with planned product launches before 2030.”

Those hoped-for launches include delpacibart zotadirsen (del-zota), for which phase 1/2 data in Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) impressed investors last year. The candidate, which uses an anti-TfR1 antibody to deliver an oligonucleotide to target cells, was tied to a statistically significant 25% increase in dystrophin production among people amenable to exon 44 skipping.