Eli Lilly is paying $13 million upfront, with $1 billion in biobucks up for grabs, for the opportunity to develop AI-designed oligonucleotide therapies from Creyon Bio.
Oligonucleotides work as short strands of synthetic DNA or RNA that can reduce, restore or modulate RNA through several different mechanisms. The Lilly-Creyon pact will span “a broad range of diseases," the pair said in a statement, as Lilly buys into the biotech’s so-called “AI-Powered Oligo Engineering Engine.”
Creyon debuted back in 2022 with $40 million from a series A and a group of execs from antisense oligonucleotide-focused Ionis.
Creyon, one of a growing number of AI biotechs, has designed its platform to find oligonucleotide-based medicines using machine learning models that it claims are more efficient than traditional trial-and-error screening.
As part of the Lilly deal, Creyon gets a small upfront payment of $13 million, which includes cash and the purchase of Creyon equity by Lilly. The company could be in line for as much as $1 billion in development and sales payments, should everything go to plan.
Lilly, for its outlay, gets an exclusive license to lead candidates for each of its chosen targets. Lilly did not give any specific details on disease targets, or number of candidates.
This deal comes just days after Serge Messerlian became the biotech’s official CEO. Last fall, he was brought on as Creyon's executive chairman and acting CEO.
Meanwhile, Creyon is working on its own internal candidates outside the Lilly deal and is currently prepping to enter the clinic next year for its lead neuromuscular disease candidate.
“We are pleased to partner with Lilly to advance our AI-designed oligos with the goal of making therapies safer and more effective for patients,” Messerlian said in a release.
This is not Lilly’s first foray into oligos. In a deal that echoes today’s Creyon pact, the Indianapolis Big Pharma penned a $409 million upfront/biobucks accord with Genetic Leap, tapping the biotech's RNA-targeted AI platform to generate oligonucleotide drugs against targets selected by Lilly in “high priority therapeutic areas.”
Last summer, Lilly also grabbed the global rights to QurAlis’ QRL-204, a “splice-switching” antisense oligonucleotide in a $45 million upfront, $577 million biobucks/royalties split.