June 24 (Reuters) - Antares Therapeutics said on Wednesday

it entered a collaboration with Novartis that could be

worth up to about $1.9 billion, aiming to develop therapies for

historically hard-to-drug cancer targets.

Here are some details of the deal:

* Antares Therapeutics said it will receive $105 million

upfront under the agreement with Novartis.

* The biotech is also eligible for up to $1.8 billion in

additional payments across programs, inclusive of option

exercise, development, regulatory, and commercial milestones.

* The company is eligible for tiered royalties on global net

sales up to the low double-digit range when any medicines

developed under the deal reach the market.

* The collaboration will use Antares' drug discovery

platform to develop targeted small molecule medicines against

oncology targets that have been considered undruggable.

* Antares will lead all research efforts and apply its

proprietary discovery engine to a limited number of historically

undruggable targets until option exercise.

* Antares Therapeutics added it will continue advancing its

own pipeline of cancer medicines alongside the partnership.

* Antares' lead oncology program is expected to enter human

testing in 2026, with several others in earlier stages of lab

development.

* Antares Therapeutics launched in June 2025 as a spin-out

of Scorpion Therapeutics, backed by $177 million in funding,

after Scorpion sold a drug programme to Eli Lilly ( LLY ) for up to $2.5

billion.

(Reporting by Sahil Pandey in Bengaluru)