Manchester-based drug discovery company C4X Discovery Holdings plc announced it has received a milestone payment of €3 million from Sanofi under the IL-17A Inhibitor programme license agreement entered into in April 2021.

“Under the terms of the deal, C4XD is entitled to up to a total of €414 million in upfront, pre-clinical, development, regulatory and commercialisation milestone payments plus royalties on future net sales,” said C4X.

C4X Discovery CEO Clive Dix said: “This first milestone payment is an important step in demonstrating the value of C4XD’s expertise and our unique approach to drug discovery to deliver differentiated small molecules to the pharmaceutical industry.

“We are delighted to be working with Sanofi to rapidly drive the programme through this pre-clinical phase and we are confident that our molecules have the potential to deliver future life-changing oral IL-17A therapeutics for patients.”