2024 Power 25 Health Care: John Houston
John Houston
After signing a securities purchase agreement that was expected to raise $350 million, the question for Arvinas President and CEO John Houston was what do you do for an encore?
As it turned out, you top it.
After landing the fundraising effort in November last year, Arvinas followed it up in April with a licensing agreement with Swiss drugmaker Novartis AG that could be worth up to $1.01 billion.
Arvinas, a clinical-stage company, is working on treatments for prostate and breast cancer. It has been focused on creating drugs that harness the body’s natural protein disposal system to remove disease-causing proteins.
Under terms of the Novartis agreement, Arvinas receives a $150 million upfront payment to license ARV-766, its second-generation drug to treat prostate cancer.
Arvinas is also eligible to receive additional development, regulatory and commercial payments of up to $1.01 billion, as well as tiered royalties for ARV-766, it said.
Not everything has been smooth sailing for Arvinas. The company made a surprising disclosure in August when it told investors it was scrapping plans to occupy 163,784 square feet in a new 525,000-square-foot life sciences tower in New Haven, at 101 College St.
As a result of that decision, Arvinas said it would pay the landlord a $41.5 million lease termination fee. Arvinas said it backed out of the lease because it no longer needed the extra space as it has embraced “a geographically diverse workforce with remote employees based across the country, in addition to our on-site employees.”
Arvinas, which reported having 445 employees at the end of 2023, still occupies 66,000 square feet in Science Park, the company said.
Houston has over 30 years of industry experience and previously served as the senior vice president of specialty discovery at Bristol Myers Squibb. He also worked at Glaxo Wellcome Research and Development in the U.K., where he served as head of the lead discovery unit.
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