Eli Lil­ly li­cens­es ear­ly-stage non-opi­oid pain drug from Bel­gian biotech Con­fo

Eli Lil­ly has li­censed a Phase I non-opi­oid pain can­di­date from Con­fo Ther­a­peu­tics, adding to the hand­ful of pain drugs the phar­ma com­pa­ny is try­ing to de­vel­op.

Lil­ly will pay Con­fo $40 mil­lion up­front for the drug, with an­oth­er po­ten­tial $590 mil­lion in down­stream mile­stones and roy­al­ties. Con­fo has an op­tion to co-in­vest in the drug af­ter proof-of-con­cept for ad­di­tion­al roy­al­ties.

The first drug, dubbed CFTX-1554, is an an­giotensin II type 2 re­cep­tor in­hibitor for neu­ro­path­ic pain. It goes af­ter the same tar­get as a pain drug No­var­tis dropped in 2020. No­var­tis had ac­quired its can­di­date, EMA401, when it bought Aus­tralian biotech Spinifex for $200 mil­lion up­front in 2015. While it was in Phase II stud­ies, No­var­tis stopped its tri­als af­ter new pre­clin­i­cal tox­i­c­i­ty da­ta emerged, ac­cord­ing to a fed­er­al clin­i­cal tri­als data­base.

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