Eli Lilly Inks Deal With Nimbus Therapeutics To Find New Oral Obesity Drug With AI

• Nimbus is eligible to receive up to $1.3 billion in total including development, commercial, and sales milestone payments.
• Privately held Nimbus and Lilly previously collaborated in 2022 to develop drugs for certain cardiometabolic diseases.
• Oral weight-loss drugs are expected to be the next big innovation in the weight-loss drug market, enabling easier drug administration.  

Eli Lilly & Co (LLY) will partner with Nimbus Therapeutics in a multi-year agreement to develop a new oral treatment for obesity and other metabolic diseases with the help of artificial intelligence, the latter said on Tuesday.

Privately held Nimbus and Lilly previously collaborated in 2022 to develop drugs for certain cardiometabolic diseases. They will now apply Boston-headquartered Nimbus’ computational chemistry and structure-based drug design approach to an early-stage, small molecule discovery program while also reaping in Lilly’s metabolic disease expertise, the company said.

Under the deal, Nimbus is eligible to receive upfront and near-term milestone payments totaling $55 million, with eligibility to receive up to approximately $1.3 billion in total including development, commercial, and sales milestone payments. Nimbus is also eligible for tiered royalties on global net sales, the company added.

LLY shares traded 2% higher at the time of writing. 

Lilly Looks To Oral Weight-Loss Drugs

Lilly is best known for its injectable weight loss drug Zepbound. Oral weight-loss drugs are expected to be the next big innovation in the weight-loss drug market, enabling easier drug administration.  

Lilly is currently looking forward to getting its oral obesity drug Orforglipron approved by early 2026. The drug helped people lose an average of 12.4% of body weight at its highest dose at 72 weeks in a study.

Meanwhile, Lilly’s rival and Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk’s oral Wegovy pill gained the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval in December.

How Did Stocktwits Users React?

On Stocktwits, retail sentiment around LLY stock stayed within the ‘neutral’ territory over the past 24 hours, while message volume stayed at ‘high’ levels.

LLY stock has gained 39% over the past 12 months. 

Read More: SoFi Technology Shares are Down More Than 10% — What’s Driving The Sell Off?

Get updates to this developing story directly on Stocktwits.

Share

·

Add us on