Isis Pharmaceuticals Inc has achieved a significant milestone in the development of ISIS 23722, as part of its broad antisense drug discovery collaboration with Eli Lilly and Company. ISIS 23722 is the first compound from the partnership to be selected for clinical development by Lilly. As a result of the achievement, Isis will receive a $1.5 million payment from Lilly.

Based on a robust preclinical data package, Lilly plans to advance ISIS 23722, a second-generation antisense agent, into investigational new drug (IND) enabling studies. In preclinical studies, ISIS 23722 demonstrated activity in multiple in vivo models of cancer. ISIS 23722 targets surviving, a molecule that allows the survival of cells that would normally undergo programmed cell death. When cancer cells grow, they appear to need the help of survivin. The molecule is abundant in many types of cancers, including colon, brain, lung, skin and others, but nearly nonexistent in normal cells.

"The collaboration has produced compelling preclinical data suggesting ISIS 23722 may be useful in the treatment of a variety of tumor types," said Stanley T. Crooke, Isis' Chairman and CEO. "We are pleased with the rapid progress of our drug discovery collaboration with Lilly in cancer and other therapeutic areas."

In addition to the payment for this milestone, Lilly will fund the continued development of ISIS 23722. The licensing of ISIS 23722 to Lilly was a component of the cancer drug discovery collaboration the companies previously initiated. The oncology relationship builds on a broad, ongoing strategic alliance previously established by the companies to discover antisense drugs in the areas of inflammatory and metabolic diseases.

Antisense inhibitors work at the molecular level by binding to messenger RNA to interrupt the process by which disease-related proteins are produced. Antisense inhibitors can be used as functional genomics tools or as drugs. Antisense drugs can be designed to treat a wide range of diseases. Due to their gene selectivity, they have the potential to be highly effective and less toxic than traditional small molecule drugs.