Eli Lilly is buying cancer biotech Kelonia Therapeutics for more than $3 billion
The deal expands Lilly's in vivo CAR-T cancer therapy pipeline, anchored by a multiple myeloma drug that showed early clinical results
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Eli Lilly $LLY has agreed to acquire Kelonia Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing in vivo CAR-T cell therapies. Eli Lilly will pay $3.25 billion upfront and up to $7 billion in total, the pharma giant said Monday.
The deal centers on Kelonia's lead program, KLN-1010, an investigational one-time intravenous gene therapy that generates anti-BCMA CAR-T cells targeting multiple myeloma. Early clinical results from the Phase 1 trial were presented in the plenary session of the 2025 ASH Annual Meeting. The transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2026, subject to customary regulatory approvals.
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Kelonia's core technology is a proprietary in vivo gene placement system called iGPS, which uses engineered lentiviral-based particles designed to enter T-cells inside a patient's body. The approach is intended to allow the patient's own body to generate CAR-T therapies without the manufacturing complexity associated with conventional autologous CAR-T treatments, Lilly said.
"Autologous CAR-T therapies have meaningfully improved outcomes for patients with various cancers, but significant manufacturing, safety, and access barriers mean that only a fraction of eligible patients actually receive them," Lilly said in a statement. "Kelonia's in vivo platform has the potential to change that by delivering rapid, durable responses in a far simpler, off-the-shelf format."
Beyond the multiple myeloma program, Kelonia is building a broader pipeline of genetic medicines across a range of diseases, the company said.
The Kelonia deal fits a pattern of dealmaking that has taken Lilly well outside the obesity market where it built its recent dominance. A $2.4 billion agreement to buy Orna Therapeutics, announced in February, was among the moves that extended the company's reach into areas including cancer, gene editing, inflammatory bowel disease, and eye disorders.
Lilly has separately been building out its artificial intelligence capabilities for drug discovery. The company launched a co-innovation AI lab with Nvidia $NVDA, committing up to $1 billion over five years to accelerate drug development using accelerated computing and AI models.