Lilly strikes $8.8bn-plus alliance with China's Innovent

Eli Lilly has deepened its ties with Chinese biopharma company Innovent Biologics, signing a seventh R&D collaboration that includes a $350 million upfront payment.

The two companies have been working together for over a decade, but the new deal brings them into a strategic-level partnership that spans oncology and immunology and includes potential milestone payments of around $8.5 billion.

The scale of the alliance also emphasises once again how China has become a pacesetter for biopharma R&D, with a Goldman Sachs report recently estimating that around 46% of all new drug molecules that began human trials in the first half of 2025 originated in Chinese biopharma companies, up from 17% a decade ago.

In a statement, Innovent said the new agreement with Lilly is also a departure from its earlier deals because it establishes "a new model" that will help the Chinese company to accelerate the global development of its pipeline.

"This alliance moves beyond traditional licensing to create a seamless, end-to-end innovation ecosystem," said Innovent's chief executive, Michael Yu, in a statement.

"This partnership validates Innovent's R&D capabilities and allows us to accelerate the translation of scientific discoveries into impactful global medical solutions together with our partner, with the ultimate goal of bringing world-class medicines to patients across the globe," he added.

Under the terms of the deal, Innovent will lead the development of the partnered programmes from concept through to the completion of phase 2 clinical trials in China. Lilly will then have an exclusive license to develop and commercialise the products outside of Greater China.

Lilly and Innovent have already taken multiple partnered drug candidates into clinical testing, including mazdutide, an injectable dual GLP-1/glucagon receptor agonist for obesity and type 2 diabetes that has already been approved for marketing in China and is in early-stage clinical testing in the US.

Others include Tyvyt (sintilimab), a PD-1 inhibitor that has also been approved in China for relapsed/refractory classical Hodgkin's lymphoma and is being developed for various solid tumours. Lilly filed for approval of sintilimab in the US, but was knocked back by the FDA in 2022, and subsequently abandoned the project.

Lilly has plenty of money to invest in R&D, thanks to the rapid growth in its current GLP-1-based weight-loss and diabetes products, and the alliance with Innovent is just one part of a drive to build its pipeline.

Since the start of the year, it has agreed to buy Ventyx Bio and its oral therapies for inflammatory diseases for $1.2 billion, forged an AI-powered drug discovery partnership with chip giant NVIDIA, and signed licensing deals with Seamless Therapeutics, Repertoire Immune Medicines, and Nimbus Therapeutics.