Lilly to buy Kelonia for $3.5B, advancing in vivo CAR-T

Eli Lilly will buy Boston-based biotech Kelonia Therapeutics, in a deal that will advance Lilly’s in vivo CAR-T cell therapy capabilities.

Per the deal, Kelonia shareholders will receive up to $7 billion in cash, inclusive of an upfront payment of $3.25 billion, and subsequent milestone payments.

Kelonia has developed a proprietary in vivo gene placement system (iGPS0) that uses specially engineered lentiviral-based particles designed to efficiently and selectively enter T-cells inside the body, allowing the patient’s own body to generate CAR-T therapies.

Kelonia’s lead program, KLN-1010, is an investigational, one-time intravenous gene therapy that generates anti-B-cell maturation antigen (BCMA) CAR-T cells, targeting the BCMA protein expressed on the surface of multiple myeloma cells. KLN-1010 could represent a transformative advance in the treatment of multiple myeloma by eliminating the complexities of ex vivo patient-specific cell therapy manufacturing, and pre-administration chemotherapy.

This is Lilly’s second in vivo deal of the year. Back in February, the drugmaker bought Massachusetts-based Orna Therapeutics, picking up Orna’s in vivo CAR-T pipeline for up to $2.4 billion.