Lilly buys pain drug firm

Eli Lilly & Co. will pay about $960 million to acquire CoLucid Pharmaceuticals, a publicly traded biotech firm that is developing lasmiditan, an oral 5-HT_1F agonist for the treatment of migraine. Lasmiditan has completed the first of two Phase III clinical trials; data from one of them are expected later this year. If the data are positive, lasmiditan could be submitted for FDA approval in 2018. Lilly discovered lasmiditan and licensed it to CoLucid in 2005, at a time when Lilly was not focused on pain management. Now, the company is developing a pain management drug pipeline that includes galcanezumab for migraine and tanezumab, being developed with Pfizer for multiple indications. Lilly CEO David A. Ricks says lasmiditan could be the “the first significant innovation for the acute treatment of migraine in more than 20 years.”