Novartis CEO keeps faith in Avidity deal despite taking $1.9B hit from del-desiran fail

Biotech Novartis CEO keeps faith in Avidity deal despite taking $1.9B hit from del-desiran fail By James Waldron Oct 27, 2026 3:48am Novartis failed trials mergers and acquisitions Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan has insisted that the phase 3 fail for del-desiran is just a “bump” in the Swiss pharma’s wider plans for the drug, despite costing the company an estimated $1.9 billion. Del-desiran, an antibody-oligonucleotide conjugate, was a major prize in Novartis’ $12 billion takeover of Avidity Biosciences a year ago. The therapy’s failure in the rare muscle-wasting disease myotonic dystrophy type 1 last month marked a second high-profile clinical setback for the company in recent weeks.

But on a third-quarter earnings call with journalists Tuesday morning, Narasimhan claimed the Avidity acquisition “remains absolutely on track.” “It's hit a bump, which is normal, I think, when you're trying to do pioneering science,” the CEO said on the call. “That doesn't change our conviction around antibody oligos and the ability to address neuromuscular disease.” Another asset from the acquisition, delpacibart braxlosiran, is currently in a phase 3 trial for facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy, he noted, while delpacibart zotadirsen is under priority review by the FDA for Duchenne muscular dystrophy. The company isn’t willing to give up on del-desiran, either, according to Narasimhan.

“Del-desiran continues to have significant potential,” he said. “We saw evidence of clinical activity in the secondary and exploratory endpoints.” But despite keeping del-desiran in its pipeline for now, Novartis linked the phase 3 failure to a partial impairment charge of $1.9 billion in the third quarter. Narasimhan told Fierce that this was a “valuation adjustment” to reflect the additional time and resources needed to run another pivotal study to prove the drug’s worth.

When asked by Fierce whether the back-to-back failures of del-desiran and the closely-watched cardiovascular disease drug pelacarsen put pressure on Novartis to step up its M&A strategy, Narasimhan claimed it remains business as usual. “When you look at the potential of remibrutinib [Rhapsido] to be a $4 billion-plus medicine; when you look at the fact that pelabresib is also moving forward in the clinic, and then you see the strong momentum we have in our growth drivers—actually, the combined net effect of all of this is not a real change in our five-year outlook or our 10-year outlook,” he said. “So we don't need to change our M&A strategy, which is primarily to focus on bolt-ons under $2 billion,” the CEO added.

Novartis’ cell therapy pipeline also suffered its own setback over the summer, when the pharma paused development of its autologous CD19 CAR-T therapy rapcabtagene autoleucel (rap-cel) for several autoimmune diseases in immunology and neuroscience after the program recorded three deaths from complications caused by serious immune effector cell-associated hemophagocytic syndrome. While the program remains on clinical hold in the U.S. and Europe, Narasimhan said the company has seen “no further … death or any other significant adverse events.” “It’s absolutely our goal to get these trials started again,” he added.

“We’re working very hard to do that. So we expect in the coming months to be able to provide further updates once we identify the root cause and also understand the best approach to ensure patient safety in the future.” Narasimhan is a board member of Anthropic, the AI giant that filed for an IPO yesterday. While the Novartis CEO couldn’t comment on his Anthropic association due to the IPO quiet period, he told Fierce that he’s “very comfortable with my workload [and] energized by all of the various things that I have the opportunity to do.” Novartis failed trials mergers and acquisitions Biotech