Santa Cruz Science Goes Big: Unnatural Products Signs $1.7B Novartis Cardio Deal
Novartis just handed Santa Cruz a very loud vote of confidence.
In a newly announced collaboration, Novartis is partnering with Santa Cruz-based Unnatural Products (UNP) to discover and develop next-generation cardiovascular disease therapeutics built on UNP’s macrocycle platform. The headline number is “up to $1.7 billion-plus,” with $100 million in upfront and preclinical milestone payments, additional development and commercial milestones, and tiered royalties if products make it to market. Novartis will run the IND-enabling work, clinical development, manufacturing, and commercialization, while UNP contributes the discovery engine that makes these molecules possible.
If “macrocycles” sounds like niche chemistry trivia, the point is simple: UNP is trying to make drugs that can hit targets traditional small molecules often miss, while still being practical as medicines (including the holy grail of oral delivery for molecules that usually get stuck as injectables). Novartis described advances in macrocyclic chemistry as opening “entirely new avenues” to engage targets with a versatility many approaches cannot match.
UNP’s pitch, and why Big Pharma keeps circling it, is their AI-guided discovery platform. In the Novartis deal announcement, UNP is positioned as a fast, scalable “discovery engine” for designing potent and selective macrocycles that can be delivered orally or by injection. The specific disease targets weren’t disclosed, but the partnership is framed around historically “undruggable” biology and large unmet need in chronic disease.
This isn’t UNP’s first heavyweight partnership, either. Fierce notes earlier deals including a Merck collaboration (announced in 2024) and a more recent large “biobucks” partnership with argenx aimed at generating orally available macrocyclic peptide drugs against undisclosed targets. That pattern matters: it suggests UNP isn’t a one-hit wonder, but a platform company building repeatable deal momentum across multiple therapeutic areas.
At the center of this is Cameron Pye, Ph.D., UNP’s co-founder and CEO, who’s been building the company’s mission around making macrocyclic peptide medicinal chemistry more scalable through parallel chemistry and machine learning. And in a nice bit of local-community symmetry, Pye and Doug Erickson (Executive Director of Santa Cruz Works) were both recognized last month as Honorary Members of the UC Santa Cruz National Academy of Inventors (NAI) Chapter, highlighting how UCSC’s research-to-impact pipeline depends on both inventors and ecosystem builders.
For Santa Cruz, this is what “innovation economy” is supposed to look like when it’s not just a slogan on a banner: UCSC-rooted talent forms a company, the company builds real IP and a real platform, and global partners show up with serious capital to turn that science into therapies. Novartis didn’t pick Santa Cruz for the scenery. It picked UNP because the technology is compelling, and because the company is proving it can deliver differentiated molecules that big players actually want.