Lilly gets back in infectious disease, via three M&A deals

Around seven years after exiting the infectious disease category, Eli Lilly is back – thanks to a trio of acquisitions worth more than $3.8 billion.

At a stroke, the deals to acquire Curevo, LimmaTech Biologics and Vaccine Company give Lilly an R&D position in vaccines for viral and bacterial diseases, including a potential rival to GSK's blockbuster shingles shot Shingrix.

The deals mark a return to a category that was a pillar of Lilly's business for decades, fuelled by big-selling brands like its Ceclor (cefaclor) antibiotic, which was a blockbuster in the 1990s. However, the group is one of a large group of pharma companies that retreated from infectious diseases on the grounds that it was too hard to generate a return on R&D investment.

In a statement, Lilly said the acquisitions – adding to a spree of a half-dozen others since the start of 2026 – give it candidates that "address viral pathogens linked to long-term neurological and oncological risk, and bacterial pathogens that are difficult to prevent or treat."

Lilly has agreed to pay up to $1.5 billion in cash for Curevo, to get control of amezosvatein (CRV-101), the company's adjuvanted subunit vaccine for the prevention of shingles in adults, which is being compared to Shingrix in a head-to-head phase 2 trial. Curevo has said that the shot has been engineered to limit tolerability issues with Shingrix, including fatigue, chills, and pain at the injection, which can limit the use of GSK's product.

The LimmaTech deal is worth up to $780 million and gives Lilly a portfolio of experimental vaccines against bacterial pathogens that are becoming a major public health problem because of antimicrobial resistance, including Staphylococcus aureus, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, and Chlamydia trachomatis. Lead programme, LTB-SA7 for S aureus, is in phase 1 testing, with the others in preclinical development.

With Vaccine Company, Lilly is buying a platform technology based on in vivo nanoparticles that can be used to generate vaccines that rival the efficacy of virus-like particle (VLP) candidates, but avoid the challenges involved in manufacturing them. None of its vaccines has advanced into clinical testing yet, but its lead programme is targeting Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), which causes infectious mononucleosis (glandular fever) and has also been linked to multiple sclerosis and various forms of cancer.

"Decades of evidence now link common infections to diseases that potentially emerge years later, including neurological disease, cancer and infertility," commented Daniel Skovronsky, president of Lilly Research Laboratories.

"These acquisitions reflect a deliberate strategy to prevent disease at its source rather than treat its consequences."

Fuelled by rocketing sales of weight-loss and obesity therapies, Lilly's 2026 acquisitions so far include a $7 billion play for obesity and diabetes drug developer Kelonia, a $7.8 billion deal to buy sleep disorder specialist Centessa Pharma, a $2.4 billion bid for in vivo CAR-T therapy developer Orna Therapeutics, and the $1.2 billion takeover of immunology-focused Ventyx Bio.