The deals keep coming for Boehringer Ingelheim, which is teaming up with Boston-based Sitryx Therapeutics to advance oral drugs for autoimmune and inflammatory conditions.
All told, the agreement could potentially mean a more than $500 million windfall for Sitryx—a sum that covers an upfront payment and development, regulatory and commercialization milestones, according to a Thursday announcement. The companies did not provide a specific financial breakdown of these commitments.
Boehringer will also be on the hook for tiered royalties on future sales if the partnership successfully brings a product to the market.
For its investment, the German pharma will gain an exclusive license to a “potentially disease-modifying” oral small-molecule program for several autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, the companies claimed in their press release. The drug is still in preclinical development and it remains unclear what specific indications Boehringer plans to go after.
The Sitryx program “brings forward a promising new mechanism,” Carine Boustany, head of Immunology and Respiratory Diseases Research at Boehringer, said in a prepared statement. “Autoimmune and inflammatory diseases remain areas where innovation is urgently needed.”
Over the past year, Boehringer has been a prolific dealmaker across its core areas of focus. In immunology, Sitryx is joined by China’s Simcere, for which the pharma last month put up to $1.26 billion on the line and received a bispecific antibody in return. The asset targets both the TL1A and IL-23 proteins, which are key players in the inflammatory cascade. In April last year, Boehringer paid $12 million upfront and promised up to $345 million in milestones to license B cell depletion asset from Cue Biopharma.
The cornerstone of the deal is SIM0709, which Simcere designed to target both TL1A and IL-23, crucial players in facilitating inflammation. Boehringer Ingelheim will advance the asset for inflammatory bowel diseases.
January 27, 2026
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Elsewhere, the German giant committed up to $991 million last October to cop an antibody-drug conjugate from South Korean biotech AimedBio. Details for this deal are sparse, with the pharma revealing only that it plans to use the molecule for cancer. A few months earlier, in July 2025, Boehringer linked up with Re-Vana Therapeutics, pledging up to $1 billion to leverage the Irish startup’s drug delivery platform that enables the injection of polymers into the eye. The pact involves three initial targets.
