Boehringer Ingelheim/Orexo collaboration yields candidate drug

Boehringer Ingelheim has announced that a development candidate has been chosen as part of its research partnership with Orexo into pain and inflammatory diseases.

The company will offer a milestone payment of 6.5 million euros (5.5 million pounds) after research into prostaglandin E2, an endogenous substance central to various inflammatory processes, yielded the candidate drug.

This comes as part of a longstanding research and development partnership arranged in 2005 between Boehringer Ingelheim and Biolipox, which has been part of Orexo since 2007.

It is hoped that the candidate can be used to create a new class of medication with a novel mechanism of action in this therapeutic area.

Professor Wolfgang Rettig, corporate senior vice-president for research at Boehringer Ingelheim, said: "This collaboration has the potential to address patients' and physicians' need for a new treatment regarding safety and efficacy."

Earlier this month, Boehringer Ingelheim published new clinical data demonstrating the benefits its drug afatinib can deliver for lung cancer patients.