Novartis to buy Avidity Biosciences for $12 billion

Novartis has agreed to acquire Avidity Biosciences, an innovator in RNA therapeutics, strengthening its late-stage neuroscience pipeline, the company says. Keystone-SDA

The Swiss pharmaceutical group Novartis has agreed to buy the US biotech company Avidity Biosciences, the company said on Sunday. Novartis hopes the purchase will give it access to new therapies and boost mid-term growth.

+ Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox

The transaction strengthens Novartis’ neuroscience business with three programmes in the late development phase, according to a press release issued on Sunday evening. These programmes focus on genetic neuromuscular diseases.

The Swiss pharma giant is prepared to pay around $12 billion in cash for the programmes. Before the transaction is completed, Avidity will spin off its early cardiology programmes into a new company (SpinCo). According to Novartis, the transaction is expected to be finalised in the first half of 2026.

“The Avidity team has built strong programmes with industry-leading delivery of RNA therapeutics to muscle tissue,” Novartis chief executive officer Vas Narasimhan was quoted as saying in the press release. “We look forward to advancing these programmes to transform the course of disease for patients.”

Market opportunities worth billions

Novartis expects the acquisition to create market opportunities worth billions of dollars through planned product launches before 2030, according to the statement. This would increase the company’s expected annual growth for the period between 2024 and 2029 from 5 to 6%. In the long term, growth is expected to increase in the mid-single-digit range.

+ Swiss pharma sector could face steep US tariffs

The takeover, which was unanimously approved by the boards of directors of both companies, is subject to regulatory approvals and the approval of Avidity shareholders, who are being offered a premium of 46%. Until completion, both companies will remain independent.

Avidity is headquartered in San Diego, US, and has a product pipeline in early or mid-stage clinical trials. The company specialises in the research and development of drugs for rare genetic diseases such as Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) and other muscular diseases.

Translated from German by DeepL/sb

How we work

We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools to translate them into English. A journalist then reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication.  

Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.

If you have any questions about how we work, write to us at [e-mail]