Nimbus Therapeutics has announced that it has entered into a multi-year research partnership and a $1.3 billion exclusive license agreement with Eli Lilly in order to develop oral treatments in obesity as well as other metabolic diseases.
Lilly, which very recently went ahead and announced the topline results coming from its phase III trial studying Orforglipron, which is its oral GLP-1 therapy, is looking forward to continuing the development and advancement of its oral GLP-1 products because of Nimbus.
This indeed marks the second time that Nimbus as well as Lilly have come together. Back in October 2022, both companies collaborated in a research push and also an exclusive global license agreement when it came to the development and commercialization of small molecule activators concerning AMPK, which is a key regulator as far as cellular energy metabolism in cardiometabolic diseases is concerned.
All across the collaboration, Nimbus made utmost use of its computational approaches along with the structure-based drug design capacities to enable overcoming the issues related to developing selective activators of specific AMPK isoforms.
As per the president of research and development at Nimbus, Peter J. Tummino, Ph.D., their team has gone on to solve a decades-old barrier when it comes to drug development because of the discovery of a highly selective isoform-specific AMPK activator. This success showcases the power of the computational approach by Nimbus towards drug discovery mixed with the deep expertise in terms of cardiometabolic disease of Lilly.
Like the past collaboration, the companies are anticipated to apply computational chemistry and also structure-based drug design approach of Nimbus to an early-stage and small-molecule discovery program, which goes on to address a prominent unmet need within the gamut of obesity.
The group vice president of diabetes and metabolic research and development with Lilly, Ruth Gimeno, says that they are very pleased to deepen their collaboration with Nimbus, which boasts of a team that has showcased exceptional capacity to tackle the intricate drug discovery issues, and working together in order to develop this novel obesity therapy does represent quite a significant addition to the efforts of Lilly to advance the innovative treatment alternative for patients having metabolic disorders.
As per the terms of the license agreement, Nimbus is all set to avail both upfront as well as near-term milestone payments, which are valued at a total of $55 million, in addition to the already granted eligibility to get upwards of $1.3 billion in overall payments, which includes development, commercial as well as sales milestone payments. Nimbus is also going to be eligible to get tiered royalties when it comes to global net sales.
Timminon adds that at Nimbus, computational scientists, medicinal chemists as well as pharmacologists along with translational biologists, work together so as to integrate AI-driven predictive models having structure-based design in order to come up with novel small molecules having best-in-class potential. This kind of integration has helped them to consistently roll out optimized clinical candidates in terms of difficult-to-drug targets. He further said that they are excited to partner along with Lilly on another program, blending their discovery prowess along with the metabolic disease expertise so as to bring a much-required new treatments in obesity and go ahead and make a meaningful difference within their lives.
