Eli Lilly $LLY said Tuesday that it had agreed to acquire three vaccine developers — Curevo, LimmaTech Biologics, and Vaccine Company. The deals are worth up to roughly $3.8 billion combined, according to Bloomberg.
The deals give Lilly vaccines targeting shingles, bacterial pathogens, and Epstein-Barr virus as it expands beyond weight loss drugs
jetcityimage / Getty Images
Eli Lilly $LLY said Tuesday that it had agreed to acquire three vaccine developers — Curevo, LimmaTech Biologics, and Vaccine Company. The deals are worth up to roughly $3.8 billion combined, according to Bloomberg.
All three transactions reflect Lilly's ambitions to establish a foothold in the business of preventing infectious diseases, according to Reuters. The Curevo deal centers on an adult shingles vaccine candidate, with the acquisition structured to deliver its shareholders as much as $1.5 billion — an initial sum at closing followed by an additional payment tied to a specified development milestone. For LimmaTech Biologics, whose pipeline targets bacterial pathogens, equity holders stand to collect up to $780 million, with the total comprising a payment at signing plus further sums contingent on hitting certain development benchmarks.
The third deal involves Vaccine Company, a privately held preclinical biotechnology company developing vaccines for infectious diseases, the company said. The price tag for Vaccine Company could reach $1.55 billion in total, structured as an initial cash payment combined with additional amounts unlocked by clinical and commercial milestones. Its lead program is a Phase 1-ready candidate targeting Epstein-Barr virus, a pathogen that infects the vast majority of the global population and has been linked to multiple sclerosis and several cancers. The company's technology uses engineered nanoparticles to display multiple antigens simultaneously, an approach designed to generate durable immune responses while reducing manufacturing complexity compared with traditional virus-like particle vaccines, the company said.
"Epstein-Barr virus is among the most prevalent human viruses in the world, yet we do not yet have a vaccine against it," Daniel M. Skovronsky, Lilly's chief scientific and product officer and president of Lilly Research Laboratories, said in a statement. "The case for prevention extends well beyond infectious mononucleosis itself — evidence now links EBV to multiple sclerosis and several malignancies and interrupting that chain earlier could meaningfully reduce the long-term burden of these diseases."
Before Tuesday's opening bell, Lilly's share price had climbed roughly 1.5%.
The three vaccine deals are the latest in a string of acquisitions Lilly has made in 2026 as it deploys cash generated by its obesity drug business into new therapeutic areas. Earlier this year the company agreed to buy Kelonia Therapeutics, a developer of in vivo CAR-T cell therapies, for up to $7 billion, and acquired sleep drug developer Centessa Pharmaceuticals for $7.8 billion. The vaccine deals were first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
Join 500,000+ readers who start their day with Quartz.
By subscribing, you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.