Swiss drug giant Novartis has extended its partnership with MorphoSys, a German biotechnology firm, saying it will pay at least US$600 million over 10 years as the price of working with the smaller company to help it discover and develop antibody-based medicines. If Munich-based MorphoSys meets milestones for clinical development and market approval, the payments could exceed $1 billion, the companies said on 2 December. Novartis will gain almost exclusive access to the smaller firm's libraries of human antibodies, copies of which will be transferred to Novartis research sites.