Novartis Bets $1.5 Billion on UK’s Myricx as ADC Race Moves From Targets to Toxic Payloads

The race in antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) is no longer just about who can find better cancer cell targets, nor simply about who can attach stronger toxins to antibodies. Novartis has agreed to acquire UK startup Myricx Bio for up to $1.5 billion, showing that large pharmaceutical companies are pushing their attention toward a more upstream question: after an ADC enters a tumor cell, can the payload that actually kills cancer cells have a new mechanism of action?

According to reports by the Financial Times and The Guardian, Novartis will pay $1.1 billion in upfront cash, with up to another $400 million in milestone payments, bringing the total potential value of the acquisition to as much as $1.5 billion. Myricx is headquartered in London, and the transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2026; securing a valuation of this scale while its drug candidates are still at an early stage reflects the market’s intense competition for next-generation ADC technology platforms.

At the core of Myricx is its N-myristoyltransferase inhibitor (NMTi) payload platform. NMT is a class of enzyme involved in protein lipid modification and is related to the localization and function of various proteins inside cells; Myricx is attempting to use molecules that inhibit NMT as ADC payloads, allowing the antibody to first carry the drug to tumor cells and then release an active ingredient with cell-killing effects. This differs from the approach of many existing ADCs that use microtubule inhibitors or DNA-damaging payloads. If it proves viable, it could provide another way to attack drug-resistant or hard-to-treat tumors.

However, the scientific promise of this deal still carries clear early-stage risk. Public information indicates that Myricx is developing an early-stage oncology pipeline and platform technology, not products that already have large late-stage clinical results. In other words, what Novartis is buying is a design logic that still awaits validation in human data: whether NMTi can exert anticancer activity as an ADC payload within a sufficient safety window, whether it can extend across different tumor settings, and whether it can truly outperform existing payloads are questions that still need clinical trials to answer.

That is also why the transaction has drawn attention. In recent years, ADCs have become one of the main directions in oncology drug development because of the success of products such as Enhertu, but that enthusiasm has also brought pressure toward homogenization: more and more pipelines share the same targets, similar linkers, and similar payloads. If Myricx can provide a new payload class, the significance for Novartis may go beyond one or two drug candidates and instead expand its in-house ADC R&D toolbox.

Myricx also carries symbolic meaning for academic translation in the United Kingdom. The Guardian reported that the company was founded in 2019 as a startup derived from scientific work related to Imperial College London and the Francis Crick Institute. For the UK biotech ecosystem, high-value acquisitions of this kind are both an affirmation of R&D capability and another reminder of an old issue: domestic early-stage science can nurture globally significant assets, but subsequent large-scale development and commercialization often still end up in the hands of multinational pharmaceutical companies.

**Background Context**

The next stage of the ADC industry may not be determined only by a single star target, but by multiple technical details collectively creating distance: antibody selection, linker stability, bystander effects, payload toxicity, and patient stratification will all influence success or failure. Novartis’s acquisition of Myricx sits squarely on this path. It is not a clinically proven victory, but an expensive early-stage bet: buying early access to a chemical entry point that could change the payload landscape as the ADC race becomes increasingly crowded.