Laboratory News

GE and Eli Lilly Team Up to Develop Enzastaurin Cancer Drug and Corresponding Test

With the goal of developing companion diagnostic tests to support targeted therapies, General Electric  (NYSE:GE) and Eli Lilly  NYSE:LLY) entered into a 3-year collaborative research agreement to discover and develop IVD assays that may predict the response of different cancers to targeted therapies.

Eli Lilly's interest in collaboration centers around its research into targeted cancer therapeutics, specifically a drug called enzastaurin that is currently in late-stage clinical trials.  GE is actively developing multiplexed tissue-based assays and image analysis tools that can measure multiple biological pathways.  In this collaboration, Eli Lilly will provide GE with access to clinical tissue samples from patients enrolled in the trials.  GE will, in turn, provide Eli Lilly with access to the company's technologies and automated tissue-based image analysis and molecular reagents

Together, the companies hope to discover protein and gene signatures that will predict the likelihood that enzastaurin, and possibly other medications, will be effective in treating certain cancers.  These signatures can be used to preselect patients who are good candidates for targeted therapies.  

Eli Lilly is hoping to come up with "a biomarker set that tells us which patients should be on enzastaurin and which patients should not," said Jeremy Graff, PhD, research advisor for Lilly Research Laboratories  at Eli Lilly.  Lilly will be able to streamline its clinical trials with the research.  If enzastaurin is launched, having the biomarker set established may help Lilly get the product on the marketplace because the company will already know which patients should be taking the drug. 

GE stands to earn the rights to a companion diagnostic test for enzastaurin that is clinically validated and married to the drug, according to Michael Montalo, PhD, manager of the cellular and molecular biology laboratory at GE Global Research .  Eli Lilly plans to collaborate with other IVD companies in the future. 

This joint venture signals that pharmaceutical companies are beginning to accept the necessity of pushing targeted therapies forward in conjunction with companion diagnostics and biomarker strategies.  Future treatments for cancer and other ailments will become more and more personalized as new biomarker tests are developed.  Laboratories stand to benefit, as more blood tests will be necessary to determine which treatments are appropriate for which patients.

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