Ann: Novartis and Mesoblast Remestemcel-L Collaboration, page-448

Not normal times indeed... what’s effectively happened is that Mesoblast have landed a massive partner in around 6 months ... compared to what would normally take many years.

Mesoblast now have three flagship channels in phase three... CHF, CLBP and ARDS.

Similar to when Cephalon paid US$130m upfront and US$220m in equity investment in 2010 to be the global partner for MSB’s heart failure program (after several years of clinical trials)... Novartis have stepped in to do the same for the ARDS program.

ARDS is actually a smaller market than heart failure... whilst COVID ARDS is front and centre now.. the mid to long term market opportunity is less certain. Heart failure on the other hand is a known market opportunity... and it’s massive.

Anyhow I digress... IMO Novartis and MSB are signing this deal now because they know there are still regulatory hurdles to be met before this partnership can proceed. They want to be ready to hit the ground running once the trial reads out... and time is of the essence.

This deal has been in the making for months and I don’t think Novartis or MSB were pushed along by any new data... once the general terms were agreed and the paperwork was drawn up... they put pen to paper. I wouldn’t read too much more into the timing... Novartis are not here to play games.

MSB are getting a very valuable partner that has the resources to help MSB win over the FDA by turbo boosting its efforts in mapping and tracking CQA’s which will make the paradigm shift that much more closer for us all.

Novartis are also going to fund any capital requirements to build out manufacturing capacity... that’s huge. MSB just need to work on developing the next gen technology, and once ready... Novartis will pay for all the scale up. No dollar figures were given in the announcement... but this is massive!

I think we got ourselves a keeper