Lilly swoops on Morphic to claim IBD drug candidate

Eli Lilly has bolstered its inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) pipeline with a $3.2 billion bid to acquire Morphic and its mid-stage oral integrin therapy MORF-057.

Lilly is launching a tender offer to acquire all outstanding shares of Morphic for a purchase price of $57 per share in cash, prompting shares in the biotech to rocket 77% from $31.84 to $56.40 at the time of writing. The deal is expected to close sometime in the third quarter.

MORF-057 is an α4β7 integrin inhibitor currently in a pair of phase 2 trials in ulcerative colitis and a third in Crohn’s disease. It is trying to become an oral alternative to Takeda’s $6.4 billion blockbuster Entyvio (vedolizumab), an injectable α4β7 integrin inhibitor that has been approved by the FDA for IBD for a decade, initially as an intravenous infusion and since last year as a subcutaneous injection.

Lilly said the deal will expand its immunology pipeline currently led by IL-13p19 inhibitor Omvoh (mirikizumab), which has been approved for UC and is under regulatory review for Crohn’s.

“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, president of Lilly Research Laboratories, in a statement.

Other oral therapies that have staked a claim to the UC market, including Bristol-Myers Squibb’s Zeposia (ozanimod) and Pfizer’s Velsipity (etrasimod) – both S1P inhibitors – and AbbVie’s JAK inhibitor Rinvoq (upadacitinib).

For Morphic, Lilly’s emergence as a suit comes just over a year after it lost Johnson & Johnson as one partner for other integrin candidates in its pipeline, and a couple of years after AbbVie also pulled out of another alliance.

MORF-057 is currently the only clinical-stage candidate in Morphic’s pipeline, but it also has a series of preclinical-stage candidates, including next-generation α4β7 candidates for gastrointestinal indications, αVβ8 inhibitor MORF-088 for solid tumours and myelofibrosis, and α5β1-acting drugs for pulmonary hypertensive diseases.

Beyond the integrin area, Morphic is also working on TL1A and IL-23 therapies for IBD, which are also in preclinical development and could in time become candidates for combination therapies.

“We built the Morphic integrin technology platform to realise the vast opportunity of integrin therapeutics,” commented Praveen Tipirneni, the biotech’s chief executive. “We eagerly anticipate the path forward for MORF-057 and other integrin medicines under Lilly’s stewardship.”