Eli Lilly has announced that it will be acquiring Morphic Therapeutics for approximately $3.2bn, marking a notable boost to the company’s chronic disease pipeline.
The deal gives Lilly access to Morphic’s lead programme, MORF-057, a selective oral small molecule inhibitor of α4β7 integrin for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).
The candidate, which Lilly said “has the potential to improve outcomes and expand treatment options for patients”, is currently in mid-stage clinical development to treat ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease.
An estimated 3.1 million adults in the US are affected by IBD, a term for conditions characterised by chronic inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract, including Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis.
The exact cause of IBD is unknown, and symptoms include persistent diarrhoea, abdominal pain, rectal bleeding/bloody stools, weight loss and fatigue.
Morphic’s chief executive officer, Praveen Tipirneni, said: “We built the Morphic integrin technology platform to realise the vast opportunity of integrin therapeutics.
“MORF-057 is a tremendous example of those efforts, an oral small molecule α4β7 inhibitor with the potential to be well tolerated and efficacious, attributes that could unlock new possibilities in IBD treatment.”
The acquisition also includes Morphic’s preclinical pipeline of other molecules for autoimmune diseases, pulmonary hypertensive diseases, fibrotic diseases and cancer.
Under the terms of the agreement, Lilly will commence a tender offer to acquire all outstanding shares of Morphic for a purchase price of $57 per share in cash.
Daniel Skovronsky, chief scientific officer of Lilly and president, Lilly Research Laboratories, president, Lilly Immunology, said: “Oral therapies could open up new possibilities for earlier intervention in diseases like ulcerative colitis, and also provide the potential for combination therapy to help patients with more severe disease.”
The acquisition comes just over a week after Lilly agreed to pay Radionetics Oncology $140m upfront to partner on the biotech’s G protein-coupled receptor-targeting small-molecule radiopharmaceuticals. The strategic agreement also gave Lilly the exclusive right to acquire Radionetics for $1bn.
Lilly also recently entered into a strategic multi-target discovery collaboration agreement with Aktis Oncology in May to develop novel anticancer radiopharmaceuticals.