Elie Lilly will acquire biotechnology company Kelonia Therapeutics in a deal worth up to $7 billion, the company announced Monday.
Lilly will pay $3.25 billion up front, and the remaining payments will depend on clinical, regulatory and commercial milestones, it said. The transaction is expected to be finalized in the second half of 2026.
Kelonia is developing technology to reprogram patients’ T cells inside the body so that these cells can attack cancer, called CAR-T in vivo. Current treatments require this work to be done outside the body, or ex vivo, a process that involves harvesting cells, modifying them in the laboratory, and then reintroducing them. Although logistically demanding, the procedure has been shown to be effective for blood cancers such as multiple myeloma.
“This is a one-time, intravenous therapy,” Jacob Van Naarden, president of Lilly Oncology and the company’s head of business development, said in an interview. “It targets your body’s T cells, transforms them to attack cancer in the body, and requires no preconditioning.”
Johnson & Johnson The CAR-T treatment for multiple myeloma, Carvykti, accounted for $1.89 billion in sales last year. Gilead recently acquired partner Arcellx and J&J’s drug rival, called anito-cel, for $7.8 billion.
Ex vivo CAR-T involves waiting weeks for a patient’s blood cells to be modified. This requires patients to receive chemotherapy to remove old cells and make way for artificial cells, a process known as preconditioning. The procedure has so far been limited to primarily academic medical centers that have expertise in this area.
Lilly’s Van Naarden called Kelonia’s data “simply remarkable.” He said he recognizes the competition, but sees the convenience of a single infusion as an attractive option. Outside of multiple myeloma, Lilly plans to use Kelonia’s technology to treat other blood cancers, and possibly solid tumors.
“We’re going to be a player in hematology,” he said. “It’s nice to have another drug to offer to these doctors, one that can be used broadly, that’s not relegated to academic medical centers that can do personalized cell therapy ex vivo.”
Lilly has gone on a deal spree this year, announcing several acquisitions, including sleep disorder drug developer Centessa Pharmaceuticals and cell therapy company Orna Therapeutics. Van Naarden said the deals are all part of Lilly’s plan to expand beyond the GLP-1 obesity and diabetes drugs that Lilly is best known for.
“Right now, Lilly is considered a weight loss company, and that’s a very large part of our business,” Van Naarden said. “But over time, the goal, very intentionally, is to use the financial strength that the incretin and weight loss business provides us to help us diversify the business even further into other therapeutic areas.”
Some of Lilly’s recent deals came with higher prices and late-stage experimental drugs than Lilly has typically purchased. The company has historically focused on small, early-stage contracts for unproven scientific data.
Van Naarden said the company has made a slight change in strategy to continue to do high-volume, early-stage deals as well as later-stage deals for investigational drugs with more clinical data.
“The challenge of doing large volume deals at an early stage is that most of these deals will turn into nothing. We know that, and that’s OK. That’s the nature of these bets,” Van Naarden said. “There’s another side of the spectrum, where you can spend a little more money, you can still create value through long-term transactions, but there’s some reduction in risk. You’ve seen clinical data that shows these things work, and then you feel a lot better about having a tangible medicine at the end of the journey. These things, of course, cost more.”
Even taking into account the deals Lilly has already made, when asked if there might be more to come, Van Naarden said, “We don’t feel constrained.”