AC Immune has entered into an agreement with Eli Lilly (Lilly) to amend their 2018 licence and collaboration agreement to cover the development of new lead tau morphomer candidates and potential back-up compounds.
Under this new agreement, AC Immune will receive around $12.68m, with subsequent payments to be made at specific milestones to a total of over $2.16bn.
AC Immune is also entitled to tiered percentage royalty payments in the low double digits, according to the previously disclosed agreement.
As included in the new agreement, tau aggregation inhibitor small molecules will now be researched and developed for the potential treatment of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and other neurodegenerative diseases.
Due to their ability to enter the brain when dosed orally, morphomer tau candidates specifically bind to the targeted pathological conformation of the tau protein.
Preclinical data generated by AC Immune suggested tau morphomers should be clinically relevant for inhibiting aggregation and seeding across pathological and disease stages.
A clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, AC Immune is focused on developing precision prevention for neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and neuro-orphan indications driven by misfolded proteins.
The company has secured previous strategic partnerships, which resulted in non-dilutive funding for the advancement of its proprietary programmes and over $4.5bn in potential milestone payments plus royalties.
Andrea Pfeifer, CEO of AC Immune, said: “The progress in this collaboration highlights the important breakthroughs we have made with morphomer small molecules for intracellular targeting of tau.
“We look forward to working with the team at Lilly to drive forward the development of these potentially disruptive small molecule therapeutics for early-stage treatment and long-term prevention of neurodegenerative diseases.
“Increasingly, the scientific evidence suggests that targeting intracellular tau can slow or even completely halt the pathology. We expect to initiate Investigational New Drug (IND)-enabling studies imminently.”
