Global Briefs: Lilly, Regeneron & Moderna
A roundup of news from the large and mid-sized bio/pharmaceutical companies featuring Eli Lilly and Company, Regeneron & Moderna. Highlights below.
For the latest news roundup on small and Emerging Pharma companies, see Biotech Briefs.
Partnering News
* Lilly in $3-Bn Drug Pact with China’s Haisco
* Lilly, Ascidian Therapeutics in $1.9-Bn RNA Drug Pact
* Regeneron, CytomX Expand Bispecific Antibody Research Pact
* Moderna, CEPI Partner in $50-M Ebola Vaccine Pact
Partnering News
Lilly in $3-Bn Drug Pact with China’s Haisco
Eli Lilly and Company and Haisco Pharmaceutical Group, a Beijing-based bio/pharmaceutical company, have entered a licensing and research collaboration to develop innovative medicines across multiple therapeutic areas, in a deal worth up to $3 billion ($87 million upfront and $2.9 billion in milestone payments).
Under the agreement, Haisco will be responsible for the discovery and identification of up to five innovative target programs while Lilly will lead investigational new drug (IND)-enabling studies, clinical development, and commercialization. Lilly will obtain exclusive worldwide rights to certain programs, and exclusive rights outside mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan (the Haisco territory) for certain other programs while Haisco will retain rights within the Haisco territory for those programs.
Haisco will be eligible to receive up to $87 million in upfront and near-term payments, up to $2.967 million in all remaining downstream milestones, as well as single-digit tiered royalties on future product sales.
Source: Haisco Pharmaceutical Group
Lilly, Ascidian Therapeutics in $1.9-Bn RNA Drug Pact
Eli Lilly and Company and Ascidian Therapeutics, a Boston-based bio/pharmaceutical company, have entered a global research collaboration and licensing agreement to discover and develop therapies for undisclosed monogenic kidney diseases, with the option to expand to additional targets, in a deal worth up to $1.9 billion.
Ascidian’s technology includes RNA exon editors, which are capable of editing multiple whole exons at the kilobase scale to repair genetic instructions causing disease. Its technology excises disease-causing exons and replaces them with wild-type exons to restore normal protein production in a single reaction with a single construct, according to the company.
Under the agreement, Lilly will receive exclusive, target-specific rights to Ascidian’s RNA exon editing technology for undisclosed kidney disease targets. Ascidian will lead discovery and selected preclinical activities, with Lilly responsible for additional preclinical work, clinical development, manufacturing, and commercialization. Ascidian is eligible to receive up to $1.9 billion, including an upfront payment, development and commercial milestone payments, and tiered royalties on commercial sales worldwide. Ascidian retains the right to pursue other targets in the kidney independently or with additional partners.
Source: Ascidian Therapeutics
Regeneron, CytomX Expand Bispecific Antibody Research Pact
Regeneron and CytomX Therapeutics, a South San Francisco, California-based bio/pharmaceutical company, have announced an expansion of their collaboration and licensing agreement to create conditionally activated bispecific cancer therapies using CytomX’s Probody therapeutic platform and Regeneron’s Veloci-Bi bispecific antibody development platform, in a deal worth up to $4 billion.
The Regeneron and CytomX collaboration, initially entered into in 2022, is focused on applying CytomX’s biologic masking strategies in combination with Regeneron’s bispecific antibodies to develop investigational bispecifics that remain inactive until activated by proteases in the tumor microenvironment.
Under the expanded agreement, Regeneron and CytomX will continue to collaborate on discovery activities to identify and validate conditionally active bispecific antibodies. Regeneron will be responsible for funding preclinical and clinical development and commercialization activities. CytomX will receive a target nomination payment of $37 million for two additional targets that have been selected, and Regeneron has the option to select up to six additional future targets. Total potential target nomination payments, preclinical, clinical, regulatory, and commercial milestones covered under the scope of the expanded collaboration could reach up to approximately $4 billion. CytomX is also eligible to receive tiered global net sales royalties on products covered under the collaboration.
Source: CytomX
Moderna, CEPI Partner in $50-M Ebola Vaccine Pact
Moderna has announced an expanded collaboration with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), a global public–private partnership for accelerating the development of vaccines and other biologic countermeasures, to advance the development of a potential vaccine against Bundibugyo ebolavirus (BDBV), a cause of Ebola virus disease, in a deal worth up to $50 million.
Under the agreement, CEPI has committed up to $50 million to support preclinical development and Phase I clinical testing of Moderna’s investigational BDBV vaccine candidate. The funding will also support parallel manufacturing activities to enable doses to be produced while clinical evaluation is underway and positioning the program to rapidly advance into large-scale Phase II/III trials should the Phase I safety and immunogenicity data support further development.
The vaccine candidate is being developed using Moderna’s mRNA platform. The program also builds on Moderna’s existing research and development efforts in filoviruses, including Ebola-related viruses.
Source: Moderna
