Eli Lilly is paying BioArctic up to 800 million dollars to borrow a way past the blood-brain barrier. It is the fourth time a major drugmaker has signed up for the same delivery system.
On June 22, opening day of the BIO convention in San Diego, the two companies announced a research and collaboration agreement ↗ built around BioArctic's BrainTransporter, a technology for ferrying drugs across the lining that walls the brain off from the bloodstream. Lilly is putting in 30 million dollars upfront, up to 770 million more in milestone payments, and tiered mid-single-digit royalties if a product reaches the market. The molecule being delivered is one of Lilly's own, undisclosed, aimed at neurodegeneration. BioArctic builds the combined candidate. Lilly owns global development and commercialization from there.
What is actually being bought
The blood-brain barrier is a tight wall of cells that keeps most large drugs out of the brain. It is why an antibody can hit its target perfectly in a dish and still do nothing for a brain disease: it never gets in. BrainTransporter gets around the wall by binding the transferrin receptor, a protein the brain already uses to pull iron across. Hitch a drug to that receptor and it rides in on a route the body runs anyway. This is receptor-mediated transport, and the transferrin receptor is the most-traveled version of the trick.
The molecule here is undisclosed, so the news is not a drug. It is the platform. This is BioArctic's fourth BrainTransporter deal, after partnerships with Bristol Myers Squibb on Alzheimer's, AbbVie, and an undisclosed partner, per the day's BIO roundup ↗. Four buyers for one delivery system in a short span is the market saying the hard part of a brain drug is no longer the drug. It is getting the drug across the barrier. Lilly already sells donanemab, the anti-amyloid antibody approved for Alzheimer's as Kisunla, and is building one of the largest neuroscience and metabolic pipelines in the industry. It chose to rent the delivery step rather than build its own.
There is a tidy irony in who is selling it. BioArctic is the Swedish company behind lecanemab, the anti-amyloid antibody it developed with Eisai and that is approved for Alzheimer's as Leqembi. Kisunla and Leqembi are direct competitors. The brain BioArctic spent two decades learning to treat is now a barrier it licenses access to, to the company whose rival drug it competes with.
The recurring lesson for everyone trying to move peptides and antibodies into the brain is that delivery has become its own product. The molecule that works in a dish is the easy half. The deals that close are increasingly about the half-step that gets it where it needs to act.