On a roll, Dicer­na notch­es $100M up­front as Eli Lil­ly eyes RNAi ap­pli­ca­tions in neu­rode­gen­er­a­tion, pain

Just days af­ter sell­ing co-de­vel­op­ment rights to two of its pre­clin­i­cal RNAi ther­a­pies to Alex­ion for a cool $22 mil­lion, Dicer­na has scored an­oth­er Big Phar­ma col­lab­o­ra­tion — this time mov­ing fur­ther up the re­search stream but scor­ing a much big­ger up­front.

Eli Lil­ly is pay­ing $100 mil­lion for dibs on some new ap­pli­ca­tions of Dicer­na’s GalXC plat­form — neu­rode­gen­er­a­tion and pain — as well as the car­diometa­bol­ic work that’s be­come sta­ple in the RNAi field. Add that to Lil­ly’s $100 mil­lion eq­ui­ty in­vest­ment ($18.47 per share, a 42% pre­mi­um from Dicer­na’s $DR­NA clos­ing price on Fri­day) and the $350 mil­lion in mile­stones for each of the 10 tar­gets that the part­ners ex­pect to pur­sue, and Dicer­na is look­ing at a pact po­ten­tial­ly worth $3.7 bil­lion.

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