Shortly after securing a partnership with Sanofi, InduPro is linking up with Eli Lilly in efforts to discover new cancer treatments via a pact that could be worth up to $950 million.
InduPro will work with the Big Pharma company on up to three undisclosed cancer targets, according to a Jan. 7 release.
Under the terms of the deal, InduPro could collect a total of up to $950 million, with Lilly also making an equity investment of an undisclosed amount in the company.
InduPro will lead early discovery efforts using its artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML)-enabled membrane interactomics (MInt) platform.
InduPro, with headquarters in both Seattle and Cambridge, Massachusetts, aims to create both bi- and tri-specific therapeutics for both cancer and autoimmune diseases. Formed in 2022, the biotech’s platform analyzes how close tumor antigens are to each other in efforts to discover disease-specific protein-target pairs.
The company believes its approach could help develop bispecific antibody-drug conjugates and multispecific T-cell engagers with better safety, potency and tumor selectivity features.
“Our partnership with Lilly underscores a shared commitment to advancing a new generation of tumor-selective medicines guided by the spatial biology of cancer,” InduPro CEO Prakash Raman, Ph.D., said in the release. The former Flagship executive held roles at Novartis and AstraZeneca before heading to InduPro in 2024.
This is InduPro’s second deal with a large pharma that has been publicly announced, with the first occurring in December. French drugmaker Sanofi also made an equity investment in the biotech and penned a deal to fund and collaborate on preclinical studies for the biotech’s bispecific PD-1 agonist antibodies. In return, the pharma has first pick of any successfully developed autoimmune candidates.
InduPro’s lead autoimmune bispecific, IDP-003, targets PD-1 and T-cell antigen 2 and is currently in studies designed to enable human testing. The biotech raised a $85 million series A financing in June 2024 and also touts several early programs in cancer.