Backed by Medicxi, Novartis vets launch rare blood disorder biotech with fresh take on drug class used in cancers

In 2017, two Novartis clinicians — Pierre Saint-Mezard and Damien Picard — approached Nicholas Benedict, who’d left Novartis in 2007 and went on to head a series of biotechs, with an idea: use Akt inhibitors, typically used to treat cancers, for rare diseases that cause blood vessel malformations.