Eli Lilly and Boehringer in diabetes drug alliance

Eli Lilly and Boehringer Ingelheim have agreed to work together in a multi-million dollar deal to develop a range of new diabetes treatments . The deal states that Lilly has to make an initial payment of 300 million euros and then up to 625 million euros to ensure they have joint rights to two late-stage Boehringer oral diabetes drugs, linagliptin and BI10773.
For Boehringer, they have to pay up to USD650 million for the rights to two of Lilly’s basal insulin analogue candidates, which are due to go for phase III trial later this year, as well as paying Lilly a further USD525 million if the anti-TGF-beta monoclonal antibody, now in phase II, goes on to phase III development and then commercialisation.
As for the drugs, linagliptin is a once-daily dipeptidyl peptidase-4 inhibitor currently under regulatory review in the US, Europe and Japa, while BI10773 is a sodium-dependent glucose co-transporter-2 inhibitor which started its phase III clinical trials in 2010.
Andreas Barner, chairman of Boehringer, has commented that the alliance with Lilly comes at a time when it is moving into a new therapeutic area with innovative compounds that have been developed from their own R&D . The chief executive of Lilly, John Lechleiter, also said the deal provided timely near-term revenue opportunities.