(Reuters) -Voyager Therapeutics said on Tuesday Novartis would pay $100 million upfront as part of a licensing deal to develop gene therapy candidates.
Voyager, whose shares jumped 35% in premarket trading, would provide Novartis a target-exclusive license to access its RNA-based screening platform and advance a gene therapy candidate in pre-clinical stage for a genetic disorder known as Huntington’s disease (HD).
The gene therapies developer is also eligible to receive up to $1.2 billion in certain milestone payments, as well as tiered royalties on global net sales of products incorporating its RNA-based screening platform.
(Reporting by Pratik Jain in Bengaluru; Editing by Shilpi Majumdar)
