Eli Lilly and HAYA Therapeutics have entered into a multi-year agreement worth up $1bn to discover regulatory genome targets for obesity and related metabolic conditions.
The collaboration centres around HAYA’s proprietary regulatory genome discovery platform, which the partners will use to identify, characterise and validate multiple long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) targets for the potential development of new treatments.
In exchange, HAYA will receive an undisclosed upfront payment, including an equity investment, and will be eligible for up to an aggregate $1bn in pre-clinical, clinical and commercial milestone payments, as well as royalties on potential product sales.
Approximately 98% of the human genome is composed of non-protein coding regions. According to HAYA, this portion of the genome, known as the ‘dark genome’, is dynamically active, generating thousands of therapeutically unexplored lncRNAs.
The company’s discovery platform enables the identification of tissue-, disease- and cell-specific lncRNA targets and the development of RNA-targeting therapies with “potentially better efficacy and less toxicity than current treatments”.
Samir Ounzain, HAYA’s chief executive officer, said: “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.
“We look forward to working closely with Lilly… to help bring patients novel disease-modifying therapeutics that could offer greater efficacy, safety and accessibility than currently available treatments.”
The alliance marks HAYA’s first with a big biopharma group. The Swiss biotech is already developing a pipeline of lncRNA-targeting precision therapies for the cell-specific treatment of a range of diseases, with its lead therapeutic candidate, HTX-001, in development for heart failure.
Lilly has made a series of deals this year, including its acquisition of Morphic Therapeutics for approximately $3.2bn. The agreement, which closed last month, gave Lilly access to Morphic’s lead programme, MORF-057, a selective oral small molecule inhibitor of α4β7 integrin for inflammatory bowel disease.
The company also recently agreed to pay Radionetics Oncology $140m upfront to partner on the biotech’s G protein-coupled receptor-targeting small-molecule radiopharmaceuticals, and entered into a strategic multi-target discovery collaboration agreement with Aktis Oncology to develop novel anticancer radiopharmaceuticals.