Lilly inks $335M deal for underarm testosterone therapy

Eli Lilly has gone Down Under to snare the global marketing rights to a late-stage testosterone booster, paying $50 million upfront for a late-stage therapy that can be applied under the arm--just like deodorant. The entire deal with Australia's Acrux is worth up to $335 million, including a $3 million check for the transfer of manufacturing rights and an $87 million payday if it wins an FDA approval.

"I believe that this is one of the largest, if not the largest, licensing deals undertaken by an Australian biotech company," Acrux CEO Richard Treagus boasted to the AAP. "It takes Acrux into a comprehensively different financial position."

Treagus says that the testosterone therapy should be ready for an FDA application in the first quarter of 2011. And an approval would position the developer to start paying dividends in 2011 as well. Treagus also said that the market for testosterone replacement therapies has hit $1 billion and is growing at a rate of 20 percent a year.

- see Lilly's report
- here's the report from the Sydney Morning Herald

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