Monte Rosa Therapeutics Announces Collaboration with Novartis for Degraders to Treat Immune-mediated Diseases (Form 8-K)

Monte Rosa Therapeutics Announces Collaboration with Novartis for Degraders to Treat Immune-mediated Diseases

Novartis receives an exclusive license to an undisclosed discovery target

Novartis also receives options to license two programs from Monte Rosa's growing preclinical immunology portfolio

Monte Rosa to receive an upfront payment of $120 million, plus option maintenance payments, and is eligible for option exercise payments and development, regulatory, and sales milestones, as well as tiered royalties on global net sales

Extended cash runway enables Monte Rosa to accelerate preclinical and clinical-stage immunology & inflammation (I&I) pipeline

BOSTON, Mass., September 15, 2025 - Monte Rosa Therapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq: GLUE), a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing novel molecular glue degrader (MGD)-based medicines, today announced an agreement to collaborate with Novartis to develop novel degraders for immune- mediated diseases. The agreement is the Company's second with Novartis, in addition to the global exclusive license agreement for Monte Rosa's VAV1 degraders including MRT-6160, announced in October 2024.

The agreement announced today was uniquely structured by the companies to collaborate on accelerating development of degraders for important immune-mediated diseases driven by highly credentialed and difficult-to-drug targets. Under the agreement, Monte Rosa's scientists will apply their proprietary AI/ML-enabled QuEEN™ product engine for the discovery and development of degraders to be further developed and commercialized by Novartis.

"We are extremely excited to extend our relationship with Novartis beyond our previously announced VAV1 agreement given the strong progress made to advance MRT-6160 toward initiation of multiple Phase 2 studies in immune-mediated diseases," said Markus Warmuth, M.D., Chief Executive Officer of Monte Rosa Therapeutics. "We believe this new agreement further strengthens our relationship with Novartis, a recognized global leader in immune-mediated diseases, and reflects the expansive opportunity in the space for our highly selective and potent MGDs. Our AI/ML-enabled QuEEN™ product engine continues to generate new insights and opportunities, delivering an expanding pipeline of programs directed against a breadth of historically undruggable immunology targets. This new collaboration allows us to expedite the development of certain of those programs with Novartis, leveraging their recognized development and commercialization capabilities. The agreement further strengthens our financial position, which allows us to progress our wholly owned programs, including multiple undisclosed targets in Th1, Th2, and Th17-driven autoimmune conditions, and provides runway beyond multiple anticipated Phase 2 readouts for MRT-8102, MRT-6160, and MRT-2359."

"We are pleased to expand our collaboration with Monte Rosa Therapeutics, building on the strong foundation and progress established through the VAV1 program," said Fiona Marshall, Ph.D., President of Biomedical Research at Novartis. "This new agreement underscores our commitment to advancing targeted protein degradation as a promising approach to address immune-mediated diseases with high unmet need. We believe Monte Rosa's QuEEN™ platform has the potential to uncover new insights in this field. We look forward to working together to translate these insights into transformative therapies for patients."

Agreement Details and Financial Terms

Under the terms of the agreement, Monte Rosa will receive an upfront payment of $120 million. Monte Rosa will also receive payments to maintain the options. In total deal value, Monte Rosa is eligible to receive up to $5.7 billion, including upfront, option maintenance, preclinical milestone, option exercise, and development, regulatory, and sales milestone payments across programs, as well as tiered royalties on global net sales in the high single to low double-digit range.

Monte Rosa's publicly disclosed pipeline programs are outside the scope of this agreement.

Monte Rosa plans to provide further information regarding its updated cash position and runway in its third quarter 2025 earnings update.

Lazard served as the exclusive financial advisor to Monte Rosa for this agreement.

About Monte Rosa

Monte Rosa Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing highly selective molecular glue degrader (MGD) medicines for patients living with serious diseases in the areas of oncology, autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, and more. MGDs are small molecule protein degraders that have the potential to treat many diseases that other modalities, including other degraders, cannot. Monte Rosa's QuEEN™ (Quantitative and Engineered Elimination of Neosubstrates) discovery engine combines AI-guided chemistry, diverse chemical libraries, structural biology, and proteomics to rationally design MGDs with unprecedented selectivity. Monte Rosa has developed the industry's leading pipeline of MGDs, which spans autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, oncology, and beyond. For more information, visit www.monterosatx.com.