LLY paid B-I a large amount of money in Jan 2011 to collaborate on this and other diabetes drugs (#msg-58667443):
Under the terms of the agreement, Lilly agreed to pay 300 million euros up-front and to pay Boehringer another 625 million euros if the German company’s two oral diabetes medications meet certain regulatory milestones.
In its complaint, which seeks among other things, a preliminary and permanent injunction, Amylin alleges that Lilly is engaging in improper, unlawful and anticompetitive behavior in the manner in which it plans to implement its recently announced global alliance agreement with Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH ("BI") to jointly develop and commercialize BI's linagliptin product, which will compete directly with Amylin's exenatide products. The principal relief Amylin seeks is to prevent Lilly from proceeding with its plans to use the same sales force to sell both exenatide and BI's competitive linagliptin.
Merely using the same salesforce to promote Byetta/Bydureon and Tradjenta (linagliptin) does not strike me as injurious to the commercial prospects for Byetta/Bydureon. Rather, the issue of consequence would seem to be how LLY’s sales reps are compensated for detailing each drug.
Tradjenta, the DPP-4 inhibitor from LLY/B-I, was approved by the FDA two weeks ago (#msg-62668535). The LLY–B-I partnership was announced in Jan 2011 (#msg-58667443).
Zealand Pharma (NASDAQ OMX: ZEAL), a Copenhagen based biopharmaceutical company, and Boehringer Ingelheim…jointly announced an exclusive global licence and collaboration agreement for dual-acting glucagon and GLP-1 receptor agonists for the treatment of patients with Type-2 diabetes and patients with obesity… Boehringer Ingelheim obtains global development and commercialisation rights to ZP2929, Zealand Pharma's lead glucagon/GLP-1 dual agonist drug candidate. Zealand Pharma will be responsible for conducting the first Phase I study with ZP2929 and Boehringer Ingelheim will fund the research, development and commercialisation of products…
The total biobucks are $530M (€376M), of which $41M is payable during the first two years of the collaboration.