On January 12, 2026, Novartis wrote a large cheque for a problem that sounds almost too basic for modern biotech: delivery. The Swiss drugmaker signed a licensing and collaboration deal worth up to $1.7bn with privately held SciNeuro Pharmaceuticals to develop antibody treatments for Alzheimer’s disease — built around SciNeuro’s “shuttle” technology designed to move drugs across the blood–brain barrier.
If this feels like plumbing rather than science, that is the point. Alzheimer’s research has spent decades hunting the “right” target — amyloid, tau, inflammation, synapses, metabolism — and has mostly returned disappointment. Even now, with two amyloid-clearing antibodies approved in the US,
