C4X Discovery bags milestone for IL-17A blocker from Sanofi

Manchester university spin-out C4X Discovery Holdings Ltd has received a milestone payment of €8m from Sanofi SA reflecting progress in preclinical development of its ongoing oral IL-17A inhibitor programme. Under the terms of a licence deal dating back to April 2021, C4X Discovery is entitled to up to a total of €414m in upfront, pre-clinical, development, regulatory and commercialisation milestone payments plus single-digit royalties on future net sales. C4X Discovery has received €7m in upfront and €11m pre-clinical payments to date. The oral drug was identified using C4X Discovery Holdings’ Conformetrix technology that was invented by company founder James Blundell.

The patented Conformetrix  platform allows the 3D-shapes of free ligands to be precisely measured from experimental data, meaning that medicinal chemists no longer need to work in the dark. In cases where protein 3D-shapes are available, comparison between free and bound ligand 3D-shapes immediately highlights the exact areas of the molecule that the medicinal chemist needs to address to redesign the drug molecule to be the right shape. In cases where there is no protein 3D-shapes, comparison between multiple ligand 3D-shapes also provides clear direction and decision-making for the medicinal chemist. Moreover, other problems such as cell permeability, metabolic liabilities and off-target effects can all be overcome using ligand 3D-structures.

Under the license, Sanofi is seeking to develop and commercialise an oral therapy for the treatment of inflammatory diseases, a multi-billion-dollar market. The IL-17 family of cytokines are strong inducers of inflammation, and it is thought that a small-molecule therapy that selectively blocks IL-17A activity would offer an oral alternative to current injectable biologic treatments for psoriasis, psoriatic arthritis, and ankylosing spondylitis.