Novartis buys IFM unit, picking up STING inhibitors 

March 13, 2024

Novartis has exercised its option to acquire all the outstanding capital stock of IFM Due, a subsidiary of Boston-based IFM Therapeutics.

IFM Due and Novartis entered into an option and collaboration agreement back in September 2019. Now, per the deal, IFM will receive $90 million upfront and will be eligible for up to $745 million in milestone payments, adding up to $835 million in total consideration.

IFM Due was launched in February 2019, with a focus on developing small molecules that inhibit the cGAS-STING pathway. The recent acquisition provides Novartis with full rights to IFM Due’s portfolio of STING antagonists, which have the potential to treat an array of serious inflammation-driven diseases characterized by excessive interferon and other pro-inflammatory cytokine signaling.

This is Novartis' second acquisition of an IFM Therapeutics subsidiary. In April 2019 Novartis paid  $310 million upfront for subsidiary IFM Tre, shortly after Tre had dosed an initial subject with its first-in-class NLRP3 antagonist, IFM-2427. The molecule was the first of Tre's three unique development candidates to enter the clinic, all of which are intended to block only the inflammation driven by the NLRP3 pathway.