Lilly puts up to $2.75bn into Insilico alliance

Insilico Medicines has once again added to its roster of big pharma partners, signing a deal with Eli Lilly that includes a $115 million upfront payment.

The agreement – which could be worth as much as $2.75 billion if all development, regulatory, and commercial objectives are met – gives Lilly an exclusive worldwide license for the development, manufacturing, and commercialisation of "potentially best-in-class, novel oral therapeutics in preclinical development for certain indications," according to a financial filing for Hong Kong-listed Insilico.

While the statement does not provide any details of specific programmes, a report in the Financial Times today, citing undisclosed sources, said the deal includes a GLP-1 receptor agonist candidate for diabetes. The article notes that Lilly is a major investor in Insilico through its Asian venture capital arm.

The filing indicates that Insilico and Lilly will collaborate on multiple R&D programmes focused on targets selected by Lilly, tapping into Insilico's Pharma.AI drug discovery platforms.

The Lilly alliance is the second with a big pharma company signed by Insilico since it listed on the HKEX last December, coming around three months after Servier paid $32 million upfront in a cancer collaboration that could be worth up to $888 million.

It ties in with a trend for international pharma companies to increasingly seek out licensing opportunities with Chinese biotechs, which have emerged as a major source of new drug candidates in recent years. Data from Evaluate has shown that Chinese firms' share of out-licensing deals has grown to 40% this year from just 3% in 2020.

In its financial report for 2025, published alongside the Lilly announcement, Insilico said it had signed $1.3 billion in business development deals with leading multinational pharma companies and top Chinese biopharma firms in 2025 and early 2026. It made $56 million in revenue last year, spent around $81 million in R&D, and ended last year with cash reserves of $393 million.

Its lead in-house drug development project is rentosertib (ISM001-055), a small molecule inhibitor of TNIK, which is being developed for the lung disease idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) and has completed a phase 2a trial in China. A phase 3 programme is expected to start in China before the end of the year.

For Lilly, the deal with Insilico is its second focusing on AI with a Chinese company in the last few months, coming after a $345 million partnership with Shanghai-based Xtalpi last November.