Novartis finds its gold standard

With one antibody on the market and others in the clinic through partnerships, Novartis AG has a vested interest in this class of biologics. But until now, the company has had no internal capability in the area. Now, the pharma company has backward integrated by selecting MorphoSys AG's HuCal Gold technology as an internal platform for industrialized antibody-based drug discovery.

Under last week's deal, the companies will use MorphoSys' Human Combinatorial Antibody Library (HuCAL Gold) to identify therapeutic antibodies against targets specified by Novartis (NVS; SWX:...