As Eli Lilly begins to take the next generation of obesity drugs to regulators this year, a lower-profile collaboration suggests the Big Pharma still thinks it could find future success from a more unusual source.
Fauna Bio, which signed an obesity-focused partnership with Lilly back in 2023, has now unveiled the target it will be focusing on. The specific target “represents a potential first-in-class approach to treating obesity by leveraging insights from hibernating mammals that naturally regulate body weight and metabolism,” according to a March 19 release.
The California biotech identified the target using its Convergence AI platform, which was able to analyze genomic data from over 450 mammal species, including more than 60 hibernators, Fauna explained.
“This target designation validates the power of our Convergence platform to identify truly novel biology in metabolic disease,” Fauna CEO Ashley Zehnder, Ph.D., said in the release. “By studying how hibernating mammals achieve remarkable feats of metabolic regulation—including dramatic, healthy weight cycling—we are uncovering therapeutic targets that have eluded traditional discovery approaches.”
Scientists have long been curious about what we might learn from hibernating mammals, with a 2013 paper by Canadian researchers considering whether the reversible insulin resistance exhibited by squirrels and bats may offer lessons for diabetes treatments in humans. Last year, a paper published in Science by researchers at the University of Utah suggested the biological triggers that control metabolism in hibernators could also play a role in humans.
Under the obesity-focused agreement with Lilly in 2023, Fauna received an undisclosed upfront payment and an equity investment as well as the promise of up to $494 million in biobucks. Today’s identification of a suitable target means Fauna received a milestone payment under that deal, although the biotech didn’t reveal its value.
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Fauna has previously explained that its biobank includes 22 tissue types from a hibernating species of ground squirrel alone as well as samples from other small mammals like tenrecs and spiny mice, with the aim of using “hibernation biology” to identify the best genes to target for various diseases.
Today’s announcement is a reminder of some of the more ambitious obesity projects in Lilly’s pipeline. The pharma’s nearer-term bets include the oral GLP-1 candidate orforglipron, which is currently with regulators. The company also served up fresh phase 3 data from its triple agonist retatrutide this morning.
