Lilly, Foghorn Enter Strategic Oncology Alliance

Loxo Oncology at Lilly, a R&D group of Eli Lilly and Co., and Foghorn Therapeutics Inc. entered a strategic collaboration to create novel oncology medicines by applying Foghorn’s Gene Traffic Control platform. The collaboration includes a co-development and co-commercialization agreement for Foghorn’s selective BRM oncology program and an additional undisclosed oncology target. The collaboration also includes three additional discovery programs using Foghorn’s Gene Traffic Control platform.
 
Foghorn will receive $300 million in cash upfront and an equity investment by Lilly of $80 million in Foghorn common shares.
 
For the BRM-selective program and the additional undisclosed target program, Foghorn will lead discovery and early research activities, while Lilly will lead development and commercialization activities with participation from Foghorn in operational activities and cost sharing. The companies will share 50/50 in the U.S. economics, and Foghorn is eligible to receive royalties on ex-U.S. sales.   
 
For the additional discovery programs, Foghorn will lead discovery and early research activities. Foghorn may receive up to a total of $1.3 billion in potential development and commercialization milestones. Foghorn will have an option to participate in a percentage of the U.S. economics and is eligible to receive royalties on sales outside the U.S. that may be exercised after the successful completion of the dose-finding toxicity studies.
 
“Oncogenic mutations in BRG1 impact a large population of cancer patients and we believe are best addressed therapeutically with a highly selective BRM inhibitor, though designing such a drug is a difficult chemistry challenge. We’ve been very impressed by the progress the Foghorn team has made against this product profile and are excited to work with this highly talented team,” said Jacob Van Naarden, CEO of Loxo Oncology at Lilly and president, Lilly Oncology. “Foghorn has a differentiated platform and we look forward to the prospect of leveraging it to discover multiple new drugs against similarly challenging targets with strong biologic rationale.”
 
“We are excited to be collaborating with the Loxo Oncology at Lilly team to use our platform and utilize Foghorn’s powerful precision biology-first approach to create medicines targeting genetic dependencies within the chromatin regulatory system,” said Foghorn CEO Adrian Gottschalk. “This collaboration enables an acceleration and expansion of our pipeline and significantly strengthens our balance sheet as we strive to bring new medicines to patients and their families.”