Lilly forges $3.35bn alliance with China's InnoCare
Eli Lilly has continued a busy period of deal-making with a wide-ranging partnership with China's InnoCare Pharma that includes upfront and near-term payments of $100 million.
There's another $3.25 billion on offer in potential milestone payments for InnoCare, which said in a statement that it would use its drug discovery platform to pursue up to five projects involving innovative disease targets.
There's no indication yet what disease categories or treatment modalities are covered by the "strategic collaboration," according to the Beijing-based company.
The sizeable deal with Lilly is yet another signal of the emergence of the Chinese biopharma industry as a hotbed of innovative drug R&D, with some analyses suggesting the country is now accounting for around a third of all pharma pipeline projects worldwide.
It also ties in with a recent trend of such deals going beyond the traditional licensor/licensee relationship towards strategic-level alliances spanning multiple programmes, with some of the largest examples in the last few years including Pfizer's cancer-focused deal with 3SBio last year, which included $1.35 billion upfront...