Eli Lilly to Acquire Boston-Based Biotech Versanis

Eli Lilly to Acquire Boston-Based Biotech Versanis

Eli Lilly and Company and Versanis announced on July 14 a definitive agreement for Lilly to acquire Versanis. Under the terms of the agreement, Versanis shareholders could receive up to $1.925 billion in cash, inclusive of an upfront payment and subsequent payments upon achievement of certain development and sales milestones. Versanis is a Boston-based, clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of new medicines for the treatment of cardiometabolic diseases. Versanis’ lead asset is bimagrumab, a monoclonal antibody that binds activin type II A and B receptors to block activin and myostatin signaling. Eli Lilly and Company is headquartered in Indianapolis,... Read More »
Eli Lilly Acquires Protomer Technologies

Eli Lilly Acquires Protomer Technologies

The pharma giant Eli Lilly and Company announced a new deal last week, taking full ownership of Protomer Technologies for $1 billion. Founded in 2015, Protomer engineers next-generation protein therapeutics that can sense molecular activators in the body. The company’s proprietary chemical biology-based platform enables the development of therapeutic peptides and proteins with a tunable activity that can be controlled using small molecules. Protomer has used this approach toward advancing a portfolio of therapeutic candidates, including glucose-responsive insulins that can sense sugar levels in the blood and automatically activate as needed throughout the day.   Lilly previously led an... Read More »
Eli Lilly Comes Out Swinging

Eli Lilly Comes Out Swinging

The annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare conference in San Francisco concluded last week with very few big deal announcements. In January 2019, Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE: BMY) made its $74 billion takeover of Celgene Corporation (NASDAQ: CELG) public just before the conference started. That was quickly followed by Eli Lilly and Company’s (NYSE: LLY) $8 billion deal for Loxo Oncology. This year, Eli Lilly was back in the spotlight with an agreement to acquire Demira, Inc. (NASDAQ: DERM), the largest deal announced in January. The $1.1 billion cash price (13.3x revenue), or $18.75 a share, represents an 86% premium to the 60-day volume-weighted average trading price of Dermira’s stock... Read More »
Eli Lilly Acquires Protomer Technologies

Eli Lilly Acquires Loxo Oncology in its Largest Deal Yet

Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE: LLY) hit the new year running when it announced the acquisition of Loxo Oncology, Inc. (NASDAQ: LOXO), a biopharmaceutical company that develops medicines for genomically defined cancers. Under the terms of the deal, Lilly will acquire all outstanding shares of Loxo for $235.00 per share, or $8 billion. The offer represents a premium of approximately 68% to Loxo’s closing stock price on January 4, 2019. On a trailing 12-month basis, Loxo reported revenue of $144.8 million, for a multiple of nearly 55.3x. This marks the company’s largest acquisition, by price, since 2008, when the Indianapolis-based drug maker paid $6.5 billion, or 10.4x revenue, for... Read More »
Eli Lilly Doubles Down on Immuno-Oncology

Eli Lilly Doubles Down on Immuno-Oncology

ARMO BioSciences (NASDAQ: ARMO) is a late-stage immuno-oncology company that develops a pipeline of novel, proprietary product candidates designed to activate the immune system of cancer patients to recognize and eradicate tumors. On a trailing 12-month basis, it generated a net loss of $42.4 million. Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE: LLY) overlooked the loss as it eyed the real prize–the addition of pegilodecakin, a PEGylated IL-10, which has demonstrated clinical benefits as a single agent, and in combination with both chemotherapy and checkpoint inhibitor therapy, across several tumor types. Pegilodecakin is currently being studied in a Phase 3 clinical trial in pancreatic cancer, and... Read More »