Lilly, Haya ink potential $1B drug discovery deal to target obesity and metabolic conditions
Lilly, Haya ink potential $1B drug discovery deal to target obesity and metabolic conditions
Eli Lilly is diving further into the obesity space with a potential billion-dollar deal with Haya Therapeutics. The companies announced a collaboration Wednesday to utilize the Swiss biotech’s RNA-guided genome platform to target obesity and other metabolic conditions.
Haya scored an undisclosed upfront payment and equity investment and is eligible for up to $1 billion in milestone payments as well as royalties.
Under the terms of the multi-year agreement, Haya’s platform will support preclinical drug discovery for the hot obesity market to identify and validate multiple tissue-, disease- and cell-specific long non-coding RNA targets (lncRNA). Therapeutics developed as part of the collaboration could potentially reprogram disease-driving cell states for better efficacy and less toxicity than current treatments, according to the companies.
”This partnership with Lilly demonstrates the significant advances we have made with our revolutionary regulatory genome RNA-guided platform and validates the potential of targeting lncRNA for chronic conditions,” Haya CEO Samir Ounzain said in a statement.
Long non-coding RNAs make up around 98% of the human genome, dubbed the “dark genome.” LncRNAs regulate disease-associated gene pathways and proteins and trigger a disease-associated cell state.
This is Haya’s first Big Pharma collaboration. Last week, Bayer and NextRNA forged a pact in the up-and-coming space to jointly develop lncRNA therapeutics for oncology. NextRNA received $547 upfront to develop two first-in-class small molecules targeting lncRNAs.
