Inventiva Pharma recently announced that Boehringer Ingelheim will extend a collaboration with the company to further advance potential treatments for fibrotic conditions including idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF).
The collaboration began in May 2016 as a research and development partnership. The joint research team has identified a potential new target for fibrosis therapy development, supported by recent data. The new target could address part of the central mechanism that drives IPF progression.
“We are very pleased with this decision by Boehringer Ingelheim, which underscores the research capabilities developed by Inventiva in fibrosis, and excited to develop this new IPF approach with Boehringer Ingelheim, a partner offering the research, development, and commercial expertise needed to develop breakthrough therapies for patients suffering from fibrotic diseases such as IPF,” Pierre Broqua, PhD, Inventiva’s co-founder and chief scientific officer, said in a press release.
The extended collaboration will include a milestone payment to Inventiva of about 2.5 million euros, roughly $3 million. Because researchers from both companies will be working together to confirm the new target, Inventiva is eligible to receive research funding of up to 170 million euros ($203 million), as well as tiered royalty payments for any resulting commercial product.
“We are excited about moving this very productive and highly interactive collaboration forward, which combines Inventiva’s strong competency and know-how in the field of transcriptional regulation and fibrosis with Boehringer Ingelheim’s expertise in the discovery and development of treatments for fibrotic diseases like IPF,” said Clive R. Wood, PhD, senior corporate vice president of discovery research at Boehringer Ingelheim.
“This collaboration with Inventiva is part of Boehringer Ingelheim’s comprehensive research and development focus on fibrotic diseases,” Wood added.
As part of the collaboration, Inventiva will study the mechanism through which this potential fibrotic target acts on multiple organs by using the company’s fibrosis target-validation platform.
Furthermore, Inventiva will also contribute to this joint effort by providing expertise in drug discovery and allowing the use of Inventiva’s large collection of small molecule modulators that could affect the potential target.
Boehringer Ingelheim will take full responsibility for preclinical development, clinical development, and commercialization of any resulting product.