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Partnerships are a great way for companies to pull complementary expertise, split the high costs of research and development (R&D), access a wider market, and boost clinical trials in the biopharma industry. Late last year, GSK made headlines for being a serial collaborator, but now there’s a new sheriff in town – Eli Lilly. This year has seen the U.S.-headquartered biopharma sign several licensing deals to bolster its position across a range of therapeutic areas.
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The Eli Lilly and Alchemab partnership to discover treatments for ALS
Eli Lilly kicked off the year collaborating with British startup Alchemab Therapeutics to discover and develop five antibodies with the help of the latter’s antibody discovery platform to treat amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a rare neurological condition that has no cure to date.
Early symptoms of ALS include stiff muscles, muscle twitches, gradually increasing weakness, and muscle wasting that results in the progressive loss of motor neurons that control voluntary muscles, leading to difficulties in speaking, swallowing, walking, and breathing. The average survival from onset to death is two to four years, although this can vary.
Eli Lilly’s place in the ALS space is growing since it paid $45 million to Massachusetts-based QurAlis for its preclinical antisense oligonucleotide (ASO) designed to restore UNC13A function – a gene linked to ALS in June. It also joined the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (FNIH) on its quest to track down biomarkers for ALS last year.
The Eli Lilly-Alchemab partnership came as the therapeutic area faced a blow with California-based Calico Labs’ and Denali Therapeutics’ ALS drugs failing in phase 2/3 trials.
Eli Lilly partner with Mediar to tackle lung disease
Soon after the deal with Alchemab, Eli Lilly announced its $99 million collaboration with Massachusetts-based Mediar Therapeutics for yet another antibody, but this time around, for the chronic respiratory illness idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). The candidate MTX-463 is a human IgG1 antibody designed to neutralize WISP1-mediated fibrotic signaling in IPF. The phase 1 study recently ended, and Eli Lilly will begin phase 2 trials for the drug, after which, if successful, it will complete clinical development and take on commercialization.
Apart from the upfront payment, Eli Lilly will spend up to $687 million in milestone payments. Mark Genovese, senior vice president of Eli Lilly Immunology development, expressed that Eli Lilly is keen on “fostering innovation” through the partnership.
Eli Lilly buys Scorpion’s PI3Kα inhibitor drug for breast cancer
Also in January 2025, Eli Lilly bet big on breast cancer therapeutics. It penned a deal to buy Massachusetts-based Scorpion Therapeutics’ PI3Kα pipeline for up to $2.5 billion to beat fellow market rivals Novartis and Roche, which own PI3Kα inhibitors Piqray and Itovebi – both U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved breast cancer drugs – respectively.
Now owned by Eli Lilly, STX-478 is a once-daily oral, mutant-selective PI3Kα inhibitor currently being evaluated in a phase 1/2 clinical trial for breast cancer and other advanced solid tumors.
“PI3Kα mutations occur in a meaningful proportion of hormone-positive breast cancers, and there is significant unmet need for new treatment options that effectively and safely target this pathway,” said Jacob Van Naarden, executive vice president and president of Eli Lilly Oncology. “The selectivity profile of STX-478 has led to a differentiated clinical profile, enabling use in combinations with standard-of-care therapies to potentially deliver meaningful impact in earlier treatment settings when there is the best opportunity to improve outcomes for patients.”
The candidate STX-478 is believed to have an edge over Piqray and Itovebi after phase 1 results revealed that a 23% overall response rate (ORR) was achieved in breast cancer, 21% in all tumors, and 72% of patients on STX-478 had tumor reductions.
This isn’t Eli Lilly’s first time testing a PI3Kα inhibitor for breast cancer. It canned its PI3Kα inhibitor LOXO-783 in August for not being efficacious enough.
Eli Lilly nabs rights to MASH drug
Then, this month, Eli Lilly invested in yet another cancer drug as well as in the field of cardiometabolic disorders. Its pact with South Korean biotech OliX Pharmaceuticals was in metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH), a chronic liver disease that occurs when fat builds up in the liver and the liver becomes inflamed.
The partnership gives Eli Lilly the global licensing rights of OLX75016, which is meant to reduce liver fat content as well as inflammation and liver fibrosis. A phase 1 trial is ongoing for OLX75016 in Australia.
In MASH, this isn’t Eli Lilly’s first rodeo. Its candidate tirzepatide was found to have had “clinically meaningful” results in a phase 2 trial in patients with MASH last year. Tirzepatide is the active substance in Lilly’s GLP-1 agonist diabetes and obesity drugs Mounjaro and Zepbound.
Radiopharma: The big pharma making its mark
Meanwhile, Eli Lilly seems to have a stronghold in the cancer therapeutics space, particularly in radiopharmaceuticals. Its licensing agreement with Australian startup AdvanCell was revealed two weeks ago. Leveraging AdvanCell’s Pb-212 production technology and radionuclide development infrastructure and Eli Lilly’s drug candidate programs, the two will create radiopharmaceutical therapies.
“By combining our groundbreaking isotope production capabilities, our team’s expertise and infrastructure with Eli Lilly’s pharmaceutical and oncology expertise and global scale, we aim to bring transformative treatments to patients with hard-to-treat cancers. It is especially pleasing to continue and expand our existing relationship,” said Andrew Adamovich, CEO of AdvanCell.
Last year, the pharma giant paid $60 million to Massachusetts-based Aktis Oncology and $140 million to California-based Radionetics to pursue radiopharmaceutical development. This was following its $1.4 billion acquisition of American radiopharmaceuticals developer Point Biopharma in 2023. It’s safe to say ELi Lilly isn’t in the dark about R&D in the radiopharmaceutical space.
Behind the scene: GLP-1 gives Eli Lilly a boost
Eli Lilly’s 2024 fourth quarter could point to why Eli Lilly has been enthusiastic about ramping up R&D partnerships. Its revenue almost doubled – 45% – to $13.53 billion since last year. Much of this is thanks to the whopping sales of Mounjaro and Zepbound. Mounjaro alone brought in $3.5 billion towards the end of 2024.
“2024 was a highly successful year for Eli Lilly,” said David A. Ricks, CEO of Eli Lilly in a press release. “We had major data readouts for tirzepatide in treating chronic disease associated with obesity, invested billions more in expanding our manufacturing capacity, and launched Kisunla and Ebglyss – important drivers of our long-term balanced growth outlook. We enter 2025 with tremendous momentum and look forward to strong financial performance and several important phase 3 readouts, which, if positive, will further accelerate our long-term growth.”
Even its non-tirzepatide drugs had a 20% growth in sales since the fourth quarter of 2023. This includes its breast cancer drug Verzenio and its diabetes medicine Jardiance, which reaped about $1.6 billion and $1.2 billion in sales in the fourth quarter of 2024, respectively.
What makes licensing deals a good idea for the big pharma?
Enthused by growing sales, Eli Lilly’s recent deal-making spree may not come as a surprise. Just like GSK, which was signing licensing agreements while amassing £31.4 billion ($39.69 billion) in 2024 – a 7% increase at constant exchange rates (CER).
Licensing deals are actually a great way to enter the market and R&D horizon while decreasing risks, according to a report by EY. In the biopharma industry, the risk here is “science,” explained a BioSpace report.
Since new therapeutic technologies are cropping up, particularly in areas where there are no or few treatments, it can be less risky to forge licensing deals compared to mergers and acquisitions (M&As). Pharmas typically pay an upfront amount, then “layer the deal on the back end with payments for development, regulatory, and commercial milestones,” explained the BioSpace report.
Although the milestone payments are often quoted in the billions, rarely do they end up getting paid out. Plus, the onus is on the biotech creating the technology or therapy to make their products a commercial success. However, M&As are often the approach taken when big pharmas want to fend off competition from smaller biopharmas in certain high-growth drug markets.
As Eli Lilly has signed nine major licensing deals in the past six months, it has been dipping its toes in a number of therapeutic areas such as cancer care, neurology, metabolic disorders, and heart diseases. It is investing in various technologies to potentially gain a significant hold in these markets in the future.
Partnering 2030: Biopharma Report
