Eli Lilly to acquire cancer drug maker Kelonia in deal worth up to $7B
Eli Lilly will acquire biotechnology company Kelonia Therapeutics in a deal worth up to $7 billion, the company said on Monday.
It was stated that Lilly will pay $3.25 billion upfront and the remaining payments depend on clinical, regulatory and commercial phases. The transaction is expected to be completed in the second half of 2026.
Kelonia is developing a technology that will reprogram patients’ T cells inside the body to attack cancer in vivo, called CAR-T. Current treatments require the work to be done outside the body, or ex vivo; This is a process that involves collecting cells, engineering them in a laboratory, and then reintroducing them. Although logistically intensive, the procedure has been successful for blood cancers such as multiple myeloma.
“This is a therapy that is administered once intravenously,” Jacob Van Naarden, Lilly’s president of oncology and head of corporate business development, said in an interview. “It targets your body’s T cells, transforming them to attack cancer in the body, and requires no preconditioning.”
Johnson & Johnson Carvykti, the CAR-T therapy for multiple myeloma, had sales of $1.89 billion last year. Gilead It recently acquired its partner Arcellx and J&J’s rival drug anito-cel for $7.8 billion.
Ex-vivo CAR-T involves waiting weeks for the patient’s blood cells to be engineered. It requires patients to receive chemotherapy to clear out old cells and make room for engineered ones; This process is known as preconditioning. The procedure has until now been mostly limited to academic medical centers with expertise in the process.
Lilly’s Van Naarden called Kelonia’s data “nothing short of remarkable.” He said he was aware of the competition but saw the convenience of a one-time infusion as an attractive option. Besides multiple myeloma, Lilly plans to use Kelonia’s technology to treat other blood cancers and possibly solid tumors.
“We will be a player in hematology,” he said. “It’s nice to have another drug to go to doctors with a drug that can be used broadly and not left to academic medical centers that can do ex-vivo personalized cell therapy.”
Lilly has been on a deal spree this year, announcing several acquisitions including sleep disorder drug developer Centessa Pharmaceuticals and cell therapy company Orna Treatments. Van Naarden said the deals are part of Lilly’s plan to expand beyond the GLP-1 drugs for obesity and diabetes for which Lilly is best known.
“Right now, Lilly is thought of as a weight loss company, and that’s a huge part of our business,” Van Naarden said. “But over time, the goal is to very deliberately use the financial leverage that incretin and the weight loss business gives us to help further diversify the business into other therapeutic areas.”
Some of Lilly’s recent deals have come with larger price tags and later-stage experimental drugs than Lilly typically buys. The company has historically focused on small, early-stage deals for unproven science.
Van Naarden said the company has made a slight shift in strategy to continue doing high-volume, early-stage deals as well as later-stage deals for experimental drugs with more clinical data.
“The challenge with doing high-volume, early-stage deals is that most of them don’t turn into anything. We know that, and that’s OK. That’s the nature of these bets,” Van Naarden said. “There’s another side of the spectrum; you can spend a little more money, you can still create value in the long run through deals, but they come with some risks. You’ve seen the clinical data that shows these things work, and then you feel a lot better when you have a tangible drug at the end of the journey. These, of course, cost more.”
“We don’t feel constrained,” Van Naarden said when asked if there could be more in the future, even taking into account the deals Lilly has already made.
