Benzinga | Nov 13, 2020 07:09AM EST

BeyondSpring Subsidiary, Seed Therapeutics, Announces Research Collaboration And License Agreement With Lilly; Seed To Receive $10M Upfront Cash Payment, $10M Equity Investment From Lilly And Up To ~$780M In Milestones

- Seed Therapeutics to Use Proprietary "Molecular Glue" Protein Degradation Technology to Develop Potential New Medicines -



NEW YORK, Nov. 13, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Seed Therapeutics ("the Company"), a global research company and subsidiary of BeyondSpring focused on discovering and developing "molecular glues" to degrade disease-causing protein previously believed to be undruggable, announced today that it has entered into a research collaboration and license agreement with Eli Lilly and Company ("Lilly") to discover and develop new chemical entities (NCEs) that could produce therapeutic benefit through targeted protein degradation (TPD).

The TPD field allows for the targeting of hundreds of proteins that are known to be associated with human diseases but were previously thought to be undruggable. Seed Therapeutics has pioneered a strategy called "molecular glue" to induce the protein degrading machinery which is present in all cells to recognize and degrade the disease-causing protein that is not normally targeted for elimination. More importantly, Seed Therapeutics' molecular glue program focuses on NCEs with more drug-like chemical properties, differentiated from the strategy of developing proteolysis-targeting chimeras (PROTACs).

Under the terms of the agreement, Seed Therapeutics will receive a $10 million upfront cash payment to fund research, as well as a $10 million equity investment from Lilly. Seed Therapeutics will also be eligible to receive up to approximately $780 million in potential pre-clinical and clinical development, regulatory and commercial milestones, as well as tiered royalties on net sales of products that result from the collaboration. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions.

"This agreement further allows us to advance our pioneering platform to deliver new molecules targeting proteins that cause human diseases," added Dr. Lan Huang, CEO of both Seed Therapeutics and BeyondSpring. "Our alliance with Lilly is the catalyst for the world-class team at Seed Therapeutics to begin developing a pipeline of TPD therapies for diseases in which common strategies have failed."

"Our pre-clinical research and licensing collaboration with Seed Therapeutics will enable both companies to better study the potential of targeted protein degradation to support the development of future medicines," said Dr. Utpal Singh, Ph.D., Vice President of Discovery Chemistry at Lilly.