Novartis signed a multi-element discovery and licensing collaboration with Unnatural Products (UNP) to apply UNP’s AI‑guided macrocyclic peptide platform to cardiovascular targets. The agreement includes roughly $100 million in upfront and pre‑IND payments and up to ~$1.8 billion in development, regulatory, and commercial milestones, with tiered royalties on sales. Novartis will lead IND‑enabling studies, clinical development and commercialization while UNP supplies discovery output and platform expertise. The deal pairs UNP’s integrated discovery stack — AI design, parallel synthesis and direct-to-biology screening — with Novartis’ global development footprint. Cameron Pye, UNP’s CEO, and Muneto Mogi, Novartis’ head of discovery chemistry, framed the partnership as a route to “undruggable” targets using macrocycles’ hybrid properties between small molecules and biologics. Macrocyclic peptides are cyclic compounds sized to reach difficult protein surfaces while retaining drug-like properties. The transaction follows a wave of platform-driven alliances and underscores Big Pharma’s appetite for nontraditional modalities to address target classes that have resisted conventional approaches.