Boehringer In­gel­heim inks 'Sin­ga­pore's largest biotech deal,' promis­ing $1B each for a suite of an­ti-fi­brot­ic IL-11 drugs

The deep­er Boehringer In­gel­heim looks in­to Asian biotech, the more gems it seems to find. Hav­ing picked up new fi­brot­ic dis­eases drugs left and right, the Ger­man lega­cy phar­ma is bag­ging a slate of ex­per­i­men­tal ther­a­pies hit­ting an oft-over­looked cy­tokine in what’s be­ing billed as “Sin­ga­pore’s largest biotech deal.”

The tar­get of in­ter­est here is in­ter­leukin-11, or IL-11 — a “very tox­ic” pro­tein that caus­es tis­sue scar­ring and dam­age but was pre­vi­ous­ly (in­cor­rect­ly) thought of as pro­tec­tive and an­ti-fi­brot­ic, ac­cord­ing to Stu­art Cook, sci­en­tif­ic founder of En­le­ofen. The biotech is now el­i­gi­ble for $1 bil­lion in mile­stones for each an­ti­body pro­gram to emerge out of its pipeline cov­er­ing NASH, car­diac fi­bro­sis, id­io­path­ic pul­monary fi­bro­sis, and more.

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