Angelini Pharma, part of the privately owned Angelini Industries, and Sovargen, a South-Korean biotechnology company, announced today that they signed an exclusive global option agreement for the development and commercialization of Sovargen’s innovative brain health asset SVG105.

Under the terms of the agreement, Angelini Pharma and Sovargen will collaboratively lead the pre-clinical development efforts for SVG105 and, following an initial option period, Angelini Pharma will have the right to advance the compound into clinical development and commercialization outside of the Republic of Korea, China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. SVG105 is a potentially first-in-class anti-sense oligonucleotide technology to target mTOR (mammalian target of rapamycin) pathways. mTOR is a genetically validated target for a number of brain health disorders, including drug-resistant childhood epilepsy.ⁱ

Sovargen will receive an upfront payment and will also be eligible to receive additional payments upon pre-defined development and commercial milestones of up to approx. US$550 million, as well as tiered royalties on post-approval net sales.

The announcement follows a number of strategic acquisitions and collaboration agreements that Angelini Pharma has entered over the course of the past two years, which have bolstered the company’s pipeline in brain health, adding to its strong portfolio in the space through sustained investment. In May 2025, Angelini Pharma and GRIN Therapeutics Inc. announced a collaboration for the development and commercialization rights outside of North America for radiprodil, an investigational drug currently being studied in multiple rare genetic epilepsies and neurodevelopmental disorders. A few days earlier, the company signed an asset purchase and assignment agreement for the development and commercialization of OmniAb’s innovative preclinical asset RO’599, a novel preclinical-stage investigational compound with broad potential to treat various brain health diseases. Last year, Angelini Pharma entered into a strategic partnership with Cureverse, a Korean spin-off of the Korean Institute of Science and Technology, which is developing small molecules with broad CNS applications. In 2023, the company partnered with JCR Pharmaceuticals, a Japanese biotech company with a breakthrough blood-brain barrier technology based on a transferrin receptor mechanism, allowing biologics to cross the barrier. Consequently, Angelini’s brain health pipeline now includes diversified and modern therapeutic modalities ranging from innovative small molecule compounds to biologics and anti-sense oligonucleotides.

“This partnership with Sovargen further solidifies Angelini Pharma’s leading role in the field of brain health, adding additional breadth to our robust portfolio and pipeline,” said Jacopo Andreose, Chief Executive Officer of Angelini Pharma. “Neurological disorders like epilepsy are major contributors to global disease challenges.ⁱⁱ For example, many people living with epilepsy are still unable to reach seizure control despite combination treatment of several anti-seizure medications.ⁱⁱⁱ Our work on SVG105 will be motivated by the ambition to bring much-needed solutions to people living with brain health conditions across the world.”

“We are incredibly excited about the opportunity to work with Angelini Pharma to further advance SVG105,” said Cheolwon Park, Chief Executive Officer at Sovargen. “Our research so far demonstrates great potential for SVG105 to transform the treatment landscape in brain health and we are confident that Angelini Pharma’s strong therapeutic expertise will propel our research further and bring us closer to identifying new treatment options for patients in need.”