Eli Lilly has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Morphic, a biopharma company specialising in the development of oral integrin therapies to treat chronic disease.
MORF-057, a lead candidate for IBD
Morphic’s current lead programme is MORF-057, which is a small molecule α4β7 integrin inhibitor for the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).
It is currently being evaluated in Phase II studies for the treatment of ulcerative colitis and another Phase II trial looking into its impact in Crohn’s disease.
Morphic's other therapeutic endeavours
As well as the significant headway Morphic is making with MORF-057, the company is also developing a preclinical pipeline of other molecules which aim to treat a range of autoimmune, fibrotic and pulmonary hypertensive diseases.
"Oral therapies could open up new possibilities for earlier intervention in diseases like ulcerative colitis, and also provide the potential for combination therapy to help patients with more severe disease," said Daniel Skovronsky, Chief Scientific Officer of Eli Lilly.
"Morphic has always believed that MORF-057 has a great potential to benefit patients suffering from IBD. Lilly brings unparalleled resources and commitment to the inflammation and immunology field," commented Praveen Tipirneni, CEO of Morphic Therapeutic. "We built the Morphic Integrin Technology platform to realise the vast opportunity of integrin therapeutics; MORF-057 is a tremendous example of those efforts.”