The partnership will jointly develop and commercialise Foghorn's selective BRM programme, and three additional discovery programmes
Eli Lilly and Company's Corporate Center in Indianapolis, US. (Credit: Momoneymoproblemz/Wikipedia.)
Loxo Oncology at Lilly, a subsidiary of Lilly, has teamed up with Foghorn Therapeutics, to create novel oncology medicines using the latter’s Gene Traffic Control platform.
The companies have signed an agreement to jointly develop and commercialise Foghorn’s selective BRM oncology programme, along with additional undisclosed oncology target.
In addition, the collaboration includes three additional discovery programmes.
Under the terms of the agreement, Lilly will make an upfront payment of $300m to Foghorn, along with an $80m equity investment in Foghorn common shares at a price of $20 per share.
Foghorn is eligible to receive a total of up to $1.3bn in potential development and commercialization milestones, in addition to royalties on sales outside the US.
Loxo Oncology at Lilly CEO and Lilly Oncology president Jacob Van Naarden said: “Oncogenic mutations in BRG1 impact a large population of cancer patients and we believe are best addressed therapeutically with a highly selective BRM inhibitor, though designing such a drug is a difficult chemistry challenge.
“We’ve been very impressed by the progress the Foghorn team has made against this product profile and are excited to work with this highly talented team.
“Foghorn has a differentiated platform and we look forward to the prospect of leveraging it to discover multiple new drugs against similarly challenging targets with strong biologic rationale.”
Foghorn is responsible for the leading discovery and early research activities for the BRM-selective programme and the additional undisclosed target programme.
Lilly will lead development and commercialisation activities with support from Foghorn, in operational activities and sharing the associated costs.
Both companies will equally share economics in the US. Foghorn holds an option to participate in a certain percentage of the US economics.
In addition, the company is eligible to receive tiered royalties on sales outside the US, following the completion of dose-finding toxicity studies.
Foghorn’s Gene Traffic Control platform is a tool for understanding and modulating the chromatin regulatory system, which regulates gene expression.
Foghorn CEO Adrian Gottschalk said: “We are excited to be collaborating with the Loxo Oncology at Lilly team to use our platform and utilise Foghorn’s powerful precision biology-first approach to create medicines targeting genetic dependencies within the chromatin regulatory system.
“This collaboration enables an acceleration and expansion of our pipeline and significantly strengthens our balance sheet as we strive to bring new medicines to patients and their families.”
Recently, Lilly entered into a research collaboration and licensing deal with Regor Therapeutics to discover, develop and market novel therapies for metabolic disorders.