Lilly to buy Orna in $2.4B deal, picking up in vivo cell therapies

Eli Lilly will acquire Massachusetts-based Orna Therapeutics, picking up Orna’s in vivo CAR-T pipeline.

While the specifics of the upfront payment and milestones were not disclosed, Orna shareholders could receive up to $2.4 billion in cash.

Orna is advancing a new class of therapeutics utilizing engineered circular RNA paired with novel lipid nanoparticles to allow the patient’s own body to generate cell therapies that can treat underlying disease. Orna’s lead program, ORN-252, is a clinical trial-ready, CD19 targeting in vivo CAR-T cell therapy designed to treat B cell-driven autoimmune diseases. Preclinical data suggest that Orna’s circular RNA platform may deliver more durable expression of therapeutic proteins and therefore unlock treatments that are not feasible with current RNA or cell therapy platforms.

Eli Lilly has been on a deal-making spree in the CGT space. Last month, the pharma giant inked a $1.12B gene-editing deal with Germany-based startup Seamless Therapeutics to develop and commercialize programmable recombinase based treatments targeting hearing loss indications, using Seamless’ proprietary recombinase platform.

Over the past year, Lilly has backed the space with a $475M MeiraGTx ophthalmology deal, a $261M acquisition of Adverum and its eye disease gene therapy, a $1.3B buyout of Verve Therapeutics, and a hearing-loss partnership with Rznomics that could top $1.3B.