Receptos, the San Diego-based biotech company, said today it has licensed its technology to a pair of drug giants—Eli Lilly and the Ortho McNeil Janssen unit of Johnson & Johnson. Under the first deal, Receptos will collaborate with Lilly to develop a drug against a single target on cells known as a G-protein coupled receptor. For the J&J deal, Receptos plans to transfer its technology to the bigger company so it can use the Receptos technology in-house. Financial terms aren’t being disclosed around either deal. The Receptos technology, which we first wrote about in November 2009, is used to help researchers get a high-resolution look at the 3-D structure of certain drug targets so that compounds can be designed to more effectively interact with the target.
