{"id":253315,"date":"2025-10-26T20:21:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-26T20:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/253315\/"},"modified":"2025-10-26T20:21:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-26T20:21:08","slug":"novartis-avidity-biosciences-in-talks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/253315\/","title":{"rendered":"Novartis Avidity Biosciences in talks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Signage for Novartis AG at a building in the company&#8217;s headquarters campus in Basel, Switzerland, on Monday, Jan. 8, 2023.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images<\/p>\n<p>Swiss pharmaceutical giant <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/NVS\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Novartis<\/a> has agreed to buy biotechnology company <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/RNA\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Avidity Biosciences<\/a> for about $12 billion, the company said Sunday.<\/p>\n<p>Novartis will pay Avidity shareholders $72 a share in cash, a premium of 46% to the company&#8217;s Friday closing price.<\/p>\n<p>The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2026, after Avidity spins out parts of its business, including its early-stage precision cardiology programs, the company said in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.novartis.com\/news\/media-releases\/novartis-agrees-acquire-avidity-biosciences-innovator-rna-therapeutics-strengthening-its-late-stage-neuroscience-pipeline\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">a statement<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The Avidity team has built robust programs with industry-leading delivery of RNA therapeutics to muscle tissue,&#8221; Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan said in the statement. &#8220;We look forward to developing these programs to meaningfully change the trajectory of diseases for patients.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Novartis has raised the forecast for its sales compound annual growth rate between 2024 and 2029 to 6% from 5% as a result of the acquisition.<\/p>\n<p>Bloomberg News <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2025-10-26\/novartis-said-to-near-70-per-share-plus-deal-for-avidity\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">first reported<\/a> the companies were nearing a deal, citing a person familiar with the matter. Novartis and Avidity didn&#8217;t immediately respond to CNBC&#8217;s requests for comment.<\/p>\n<p>Avidity specializes in developing an innovative class of ribonucleic acid (RNA) therapeutics called antibody oligonucleotide conjugates. RNA-based therapeutics are a relatively new class of medications that work by altering how genes are expressed to treat or prevent diseases.<\/p>\n<p>The Avidity deal comes as Novartis ramps up its research and development division. The company earlier this year pledged to invest $23 billion to build out its U.S.-based infrastructure, which includes plans to construct a second R&amp;D hub in San Diego.<\/p>\n<p>The pharmaceutical giant has also struck two key deals with Anthos Therapeutics and Regulus Therapeutics this year to boost its development and manufacturing of cardiovascular and kidney disease drugs.<\/p>\n<p>Avidity shares closed at $49.15 on Friday. The stock, which has a market capitalization of roughly $7.2 billion, is up nearly 70% since the beginning of the year. Novartis shares closed at $130.36 on Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Signage for Novartis AG at a building in the company&#8217;s headquarters campus in Basel, Switzerland, on Monday, Jan.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253316,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[137712,2602,28,122,14007,14463,247],"class_list":{"0":"post-253315","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-avidity-biosciences-inc","9":"tag-biotech-and-pharmaceuticals","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-business-news","12":"tag-mergers-and-acquisitions","13":"tag-novartis-ag","14":"tag-pharmaceuticals"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253315\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}