Lilly forges $3.35bn alliance with China's InnoCare
Eli Lilly has continued a busy period of deal-making with a wide-ranging partnership with China's InnoCare Pharma that includes upfront and near-term payments of $100 million.
There's another $3.25 billion on offer in potential milestone payments for InnoCare, which said in a statement that it would use its drug discovery platform to pursue up to five projects involving innovative disease targets.
There's no indication yet what disease categories or treatment modalities are covered by the "strategic collaboration," according to the Beijing-based company.
The sizeable deal with Lilly is yet another signal of the emergence of the Chinese biopharma industry as a hotbed of innovative drug R&D, with some analyses suggesting the country is now accounting for around a third of all pharma pipeline projects worldwide.
It also ties in with a recent trend of such deals going beyond the traditional licensor/licensee relationship toward strategic-level alliances spanning multiple programmes, with some of the largest examples in the last few years including Pfizer's cancer-focused deal with 3SBio last year, which included $1.35 billion upfront, with similarly sized start-up payments in recent deals involving AstraZeneca and CSPC Pharma, and Takeda and Innovent.
Lilly's deal with InnoCare, which specialises in drugs for the treatment of cancer and autoimmune diseases, follows previously signed partnerships for the Chinese company with Zenas Biopharma, Biogen, and Prolium Bioscience.
The largest before today was with Zenas, worth up to $2 billion and covering ex-China rights to three autoimmune candidates headed by multiple sclerosis therapy orelabrutinib. Biogen's $937 million alliance with the company focused on orelabrutinib, but the US company returned rights to the programme before Zenas stepped in.
The deal with Prolium involves InnoCare's joint venture with KeyMed Biosciences and is for ICP-B02 (CM355), a CD20xCD3 bispecific antibody with potential in cancer and immunological disorders.
Lilly, meanwhile, is on a massive acquisition and licensing spree in 2026, fuelled by burgeoning sales of its weight-loss and diabetes therapies, with a cumulative spend that is estimated to be north of $32 billion, with more than a quarter of the year remaining.
That activity has come against the threat of a possible ban on US companies like Lilly funnelling cash to Chinese companies via licensing and investment deals, which some lawmakers argue is fuelling the rapid rise of China's biopharma sector.
Recent reports suggest, however, that after lobbying from US trade organisation PhRMA, rules being drawn up by the US Treasury Department will include exemptions for drug candidates, as long as the technologies they use do not have any potential to be weaponised.
