Novartis lands in Boston the week its FSHD drug hits a biomarker milestone

Novartis flew from Montbéliard-Courcelles Airfield in eastern France to Laurence G Hanscom Field outside Boston on the evening of June 11, a 7h 41m hop in Falcon 7X HB-JFQ. The Swiss pharmaceutical giant’s corporate aviation unit keeps three such jets at its Basel home base, and this one landed a short drive from the company’s US headquarters and its Cambridge research hub.

The same week the flight arrived, Novartis announced that the biomarker cohort of its FORTITUDE Phase I/II study of delpacibart braxlosiran (del-brax) met primary and key secondary endpoints in facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy, per a June 11 company release [globenewswire.com](https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2026/06/11/3310187/0/en/Novartis-delpacibart-braxlosiran-del-brax-Phase-I-II-study-in-facioscapulohumeral-muscular-dystrophy-FSHD-meets-primary-biomarker-endpoint.html). Del-brax is an investigational antibody oligonucleotide conjugate that would be the first disease-modifying treatment for the rare neuromuscular disease, and the data will inform upcoming regulatory discussions. The trip puts senior leadership in the same time zone as those talks.

The Boston arrival follows a transatlantic pattern: the same aircraft’s previous flights this month include a June 7 leg from the New York area back to Basel and a May 28 roundtrip between Basel and Teterboro. Hanscom is Novartis’s preferred Boston gateway — close to the Kendall Square labs where the company’s neuroscience team advances its RNA therapeutics pipeline.