Eli Lilly will collaborate on five drug candidates based on the Oxford and Karolinska Institute spinout's exosome delivery technology.
Evox Therapeutics, a UK-based exosome drug delivery technology spinout of University of Oxford and Karolinska Institute, has secured $10m of convertible funding from pharmaceutical firm Eli Lilly as part of a licensing and collaboration agreement.
Under the agreement, Eli Lilly will also supply $20m in an upfront payment as well as an undisclosed amount of research funding over the next three years.
Evox is also eligible for potential milestone payments up to a maximum of around $1.2bn and tiered royalties on any net product sales resulting from the collaboration.
Founded in 2016, Evox Therapeutics engineers drug delivery exosomes – extracellular vesicles released from biological cells – to carry therapeutic material beyond otherwise impermeable obstacles such as the blood-brain barrier.
Eli Lilly will leverage Evox’s platform, DeliverEX, to develop five neurological disease drug candidates.
Each exosome will contain payloads for either RNA interference – where RNA molecules inhibit malignant gene expression – or antisense oligonucleotides – fragments of DNA or RNA that block RNA protein expression.
Evox will complete pre-clinical proof-of-concept of the exosomes before handing over to Eli Lilly for in-human trials and development.
The spinout has now disclosed $69.9m of funding to date. Redmile Group led its $45.4m series B round in September 2018, investing alongside University of Oxford and its venture fund Oxford Sciences Innovation (OSI) as well as GV, an investment subsidiary of diversified conglomerate Alphabet.
Panacea Healthcare Venture, Borealis Ventures, Cowen Healthcare Investments and angel investors also supplied series B funding, following $14.5m of series A capital from OSI in 2016.
Michael Hutton, vice-president of neurodegeneration research at Eli Lilly, said: “We are pleased to enter into this pre-clinical research and licensing collaboration with Evox, and look forward to studying the potential for their technology to support the development of future medicines for neurological disorders.”