Eli Lil­ly dan­gles $960M for Rigel's RIPK in­hibitor, tak­ing on Sanofi and De­nali in neu­rode­gen­er­a­tion

More than two years af­ter Sanofi and De­nali signed their $1 bil­lion neu­rode­gen­er­a­tion and in­flam­ma­tion pact, they’re get­ting a deep-pock­et­ed ri­val.

Eli Lil­ly an­nounced a part­ner­ship Thurs­day with Rigel to co-de­vel­op a set of mol­e­cules the biotech de­vel­oped for in­flam­ma­to­ry dis­or­ders and neu­rode­gen­er­a­tion. They’ll pur­sue the same tar­get as Sanofi and De­nali: RIPK1, a sig­nal­ing pro­tein in­volved in the same path­way that au­toim­mune drugs like Hu­mi­ra tar­get. The deal struc­ture is al­so sim­i­lar: $125 mil­lion up­front, with $835 mil­lion in po­ten­tial mile­stones.

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