Eli Lilly and Alchemab Therapeutics have partnered to develop new therapies for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
The collaboration agreement centres around Alchemab’s antibody discovery platform, which uses patient samples from those with unusually slow rates of disease progression to identify antibodies associated with resilience.
Alchemab has already acquired hundreds of ALS samples, and both companies will work together to discover, develop and commercialise up to five novel therapeutics using the platform.
In exchange, Alchemab will receive an undisclosed upfront fee and will be eligible to receive discovery, development and commercialisation milestone payments, as well as royalties.
Affecting an estimated 30,000 people in the US, ALS is a rare and fatal neurodegenerative disease for which there is no known cure.
The disorder results in the progressive loss of motor neurons that control voluntary muscles, leading to difficulties in speaking, swallowing, walking and breathing, with only approximately 10% of patients surviving longer than ten years.
Alchemab’s chief executive officer, Jane Osbourn, said the company has already shown that its differentiated antibody discovery platform “can lead to insights into how an individual’s immune response can generate potent, selective and unique antibodies with therapeutic potential”.
She continued: “ALS is a devastating disease and an area of significant unmet medical need. Our collaboration with Lilly enables us to apply our novel approach to a hugely important disease… We are looking forward to working together to discover and develop novel targets and therapies for ALS patients.”
The announcement comes three months after Lilly partnered with insitro to advance new treatments for metabolic diseases, including metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease.
The new drugs developed under the collaboration, which comprises three strategic agreements, will be based on targets identified by insitro using its artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning-based platform.
Lilly also recently entered into research collaboration worth up to $409m with AI-focused Genetic Leap to develop genetic medicines. The partnership will see the companies use Genetic Leap’s RNA-targeted AI platform to generate oligonucleotide drugs against targets selected by Lilly in “high priority therapeutic areas”.