Novartis to pay Sironax $125M for brain-delivery platform

Novartis exercised an exclusive option to acquire Sironax’s Brain Delivery Module (BDM), a platform intended to move therapies across the blood-brain barrier and into the central nervous system.

Sironax is set to receive $125 million at closing. The payment is part of an agreement announced in July 2025 that offered Sironax up to $175 million in upfront and near-term payments.

Novartis obtains full global rights to the modality-agnostic platform, which is designed to support brain delivery of monoclonal antibodies, peptides, proteins and potentially gene therapies.

Sironax retains rights to develop and commercialize selected therapeutic assets using the technology, while planning to use the proceeds to advance its own pipeline.

The deal reflects Novartis’s push into neuroscience drug delivery, where safely and efficiently crossing the blood-brain barrier remains a major obstacle for treatments of diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s and ALS.