Eli Lilly to Acquire DICE Therapeutics in $2.4 Billion Deal
Biopharmaceutical company, DICE Therapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq: DICE), has agreed to be acquired by Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE: LLY) in a transaction valued at $2.4 billion. DICE’s share price soared nearly 40% following the news.
Highlights
Kevin Judice, CEO of DICE Therapeutics, said, “We’re eager to see our pipeline, including our oral IL-17 inhibitors, DC-806 and DC-853, benefit from Lilly’s resources and global reach.
”Patrik Jonsson, executive vice president, president of Lilly Immunology and Lilly USA, chief customer officer, said, “In combination with its novel technology and expertise in drug discovery, DICE’s talented workforce and passion for innovation will enhance our efforts to make life better for people living with devastating autoimmune diseases.
”The purchase price payable at closing represents a premium of approximately 40% to the 30-day volume-weighted average trading price of DICE’s common stock ended on June 16, 2023.
The transaction is not subject to any financing condition and is expected to close in Q3 2023
About DICE Therapeutics
DICE Therapeutics, Inc. is a biopharmaceutical company leveraging its proprietary technology platform to build a pipeline of novel oral therapeutic candidates to treat chronic diseases in immunology and other therapeutic areas. DICE is initially focused on developing oral therapeutics against well-validated targets in immunology, with the goal of achieving comparable potency to their systemic biologic counterparts, which have demonstrated the greatest therapeutic benefit to date in these disease areas. The Company’s DELSCAPE platform is designed to discover selective oral small molecules with the potential to modulate protein-protein interactions (PPIs) as effectively as systemic biologics. DICE’s lead therapeutic candidates are oral antagonists of the pro-inflammatory signaling molecule, IL-17, which is a validated drug target implicated in a variety of immunology indications. DICE is also developing oral therapeutic candidates targeting the integrin α4ß7 for the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease.
