At $1B, PTC-Novartis deal ties record for cash up front

The $1 billion that Novartis will pay PTC to gain rights to the biotech’s Huntington disease candidate has tied the largest cash upfront payment to license a single program from a biotech, making it the fifth such deal with an upfront payment of at least $1 billion since BioCentury began tracking these data in 2009.

But the deal between Novartis AG (SIX:NVS; NYSE:NOVN) and PTC Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:PTCT) for PTC518 — a therapy that modulates pre-mRNA splicing to correct repeats in the HTT gene that is in Phase II testing — ties for fourth place among deals in this group when tallying total upfront payments including equity components...