Lilly and NextCure Announce Collaboration to Discover and Develop Novel Immuno-Oncology Medicines

On Nov 6, 2018

Eli Lilly and Company and NextCure announced a multi-year collaboration focused on the discovery and development of immuno-oncology therapies. The collaboration seeks to discover novel cancer targets utilizing NextCure’s proprietary FIND-IO platform.

Under the terms of the agreement, Lilly and NextCure will each receive options to exclusively license antibodies resulting from the collaboration. NextCure will receive an upfront payment of $25 million, and will be eligible for development and commercial milestones and royalty payments, should Lilly successfully develop and commercialize new cancer therapies resulting from the collaboration. Additionally, Lilly has made a $15 million equity investment in NextCure.

“The emerging field of immuno-oncology is offering new treatment options and hope to cancer patients,” said Greg Plowman, M.D., Ph.D., vice president of oncology research at Lilly. “Through this collaboration, we hope to leverage NextCure’s discovery platform to expand the reach of this class of groundbreaking treatments by identifying novel cancer targets that could enable the development of a new generation of immuno-oncology therapies.”

“Partnering with Lilly, a world leader in drug development, to advance the next generation immuno-oncology therapies is important validation of our FIND-IO discovery platform and our approach to discovering and developing immunomedicines,” said Michael Richman, NextCure’s president & CEO. “FIND-IO has the potential to identify and rapidly translate immune cell interactions into disease modifying immunomedicines. We look forward to working with Lilly to discover novel targets that will further enhance both companies’ growing immuno-oncology pipelines.”

This transaction will be reflected in Lilly’s reported results and financial guidance according to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). There will be no change to Lilly’s 2018 non-GAAP earnings per share guidance as a result of this transaction.