SAN FRANCISCO — Eli Lilly’s chief scientific officer said Monday that the company purchased a cancer drug from the startup Scorpion Therapeutics because Scorpion’s drug appeared better than similar molecules it had been working on itself.
“This is an example of a target that we’ve been working on ourselves for years,” said Daniel Skovronsky, the Lilly CSO, in an interview near the annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. The Scorpion drug, he said, has a high selectivity for the mutant form of a protein found in some cancers, without targeting the normal version found in healthy cells.
“So that’s what we were trying to make ourselves,” Skovronsky said. “This one checked all the boxes, and so we went out to get it.”
Lilly, flush with cash from the booming sales of its obesity and diabetes drugs, has recently acquired startups including Morphic Therapeutics, DICE Therapeutics, Versanis Bio, and POINT Biopharma.
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