Orionis Biosciences, a privately held, clinical-stage life sciences company, announced on Wednesday that it has entered into a multi-year strategic collaboration with Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis AG (SIX:NOVN) (NYSE:NVS) to discover and develop molecular glue medicines targeting multiple therapeutic areas.

This partnership expands the companies' existing relationship and focuses on advancing induced proximity approaches across multiple disease areas.

The collaboration will leverage Orionis's Allo-Glue platform and its AI-driven discovery engine to accelerate target and ligase profiling as well as molecular glue optimisation.

Under the agreement, Orionis will receive an upfront payment of USD40m. The company is also eligible for research, development, and commercial milestone payments of up to USD 1.4 billion, along with tiered royalties on net sales of resulting collaboration products.