Eli Lilly joins with Lycia: Protein degradation technology to be the focus

Eli Lilly & Co. of Indianapolis recently entered into a multi-year research collaboration and licensing agreement with South San Francisco, Calif.-based Lycia Therapeutics. According to the press release, this agreement will focus on the discovery, development, and commercialization of novel targeted therapeutics using Lycia’s proprietary lysosomal targeting chimera (LYTAC) protein degradation technology. 

Eli Lilly will pay over $35 million and has said it will pay more than $1.6 billion in milestone payments to work with Lycia on up to five targets in areas like immunology and pain. The two companies will use LYTAC to discover and develop novel degraders to address unmet needs in these areas.

We looked in ResoluteAI’s Foundation platform to learn more about protein degradation technology for undruggable targets.

Companies, patents, and news involving protein degradation technology for undruggable targets

Companies

There are currently two companies working in protein degradation technology for undruggable targets:

1. Kronos Bio of San Mateo, Calif., which was founded in 2017
2. Celeris Therapeutics of Graz, Austria, which was founded this year

The chart below shows the funding totals for these companies along with the type of funding they received.

Companies focusing on protein degradation, funding amounts, fundings types (Data from Crunchbase)

Patents

We found over 30 patents related to protein degradation technology and undruggable targets. Below is a chart outlining the areas of research and top inventors.

Patents by research areas and categories involving protein degradation.

The top three inventors are:

1. Donald Rao-  His most recent patent is Furin-knockdown and GM-CSF- augmented (FANG) cancer vaccine, approved in 2019. 
2. John Nemunaitis, who worked with Rao on this Furin patent.
3. Gregory Verdine- HIs most recent patent is Stabilized compounds having secondary structure motifs, approved in 2019.

News

This Sankey diagram below shows news related to protein degradation and undruggable targets since 2020. It breaks this information down into specific research areas and categories.

News related to protein degradation and undruggable targets since 2020 by research area and categories.