Eli Lilly has handed AC Immune 10 million Swiss francs ($12.5 million) to expand their Alzheimer’s disease collaboration as a candidate moves closer to the clinic.
The U.S. pharma first tapped up AC Immune in a 2018 deal that included an $81 million upfront fee. That pact, which came with up to 1.7 billion francs ($2.1 billion) in milestone payments attached, was centered on a preclinical small molecule designed to inhibit tau aggregation in Alzheimer’s patients.
The idea behind the so-called “morphomer” small molecule program is that these drugs can be administered orally and then enter the brain to bind with tau protein. AC Immune said a morphomer candidate is expected to “imminently” begin the studies needed to justify an application to enter human trials.
The updated deal with Lilly “continues the research and collaboration to cover development of new lead tau Morphomer candidates and potential back-up compounds,” AC Immune explained in this morning’s release.
As well as the upfront payment, the amended deal will see the Swiss biotech receive an undisclosed milestone payment should a candidate make it into a phase 1 trial. It follows a previous amendment to the deal back in 2020 that saw AC Immune receive a 10 million franc milestone payment.
“The progress in this collaboration highlights the important breakthroughs we have made with Morphomer small molecules for intracellular targeting of tau,” AC Immune CEO Andrea Pfeifer, Ph.D., said in the release.
“We look forward to working with the team at Lilly to drive forward the development of these potentially disruptive small molecule therapeutics for early-stage treatment and long-term prevention of neurodegenerative diseases,” Pfeifer added. “Increasingly, the scientific evidence suggests that targeting intracellular tau can slow or even completely halt the pathology.”
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Even as the Alzheimer’s work with Lilly progresses, the biotech has shown less confidence in other uses of the morphomer technology. Last year, the biotech ended work on a preclinical morphomer-antibody drug conjugate (morADC), despite Pfeifer having suggested in 2024 that morADCs could become the biotech’s “prime focus.”
The pipeline reprioritization in September 2025 also saw AC Immune remove antibodies against ASC and TDP-43, as well as lay off around 30% of its workforce. It left the biotech’s wholly-owned pipeline organized around the phase 2 Parkinson’s disease prospect ACI-7104.056 and a pair of preclinical programs against NLRP3 and alpha-synuclein.
AC Immune also has other Alzheimer’s partnerships in the works with Johnson & Johnson and Takeda focused on active immunotherapies against tau and amyloid-beta, respectively. J&J paused further enrollment in a phase 2b trial of their anti-tau immunotherapy in February, leaving analysts to speculate that recruitment challenges may have been the culprit.
