Dive Brief:

• Eli Lilly will acquire biotechnology startup Orna Therapeutics, saying Monday it will pay up to $2.4 billion to buy the privately owned company and a technology able to reprogram immune cells within the body.
• The Indiana-based drugmaker didn’t disclose how much upfront cash it’s shelling out for Orna, which specializes in “circular” RNA medicines that are believed to be more stable and easier to pair with the lipid nanoparticles used for delivery. But it noted in its statement that it intends to use Orna’s technology to develop cell therapies for autoimmune conditions.
• In announcing the deal, Lilly cited its interest in Orna’s lead project, which instructs immune cells to latch onto B cells that are attacking patients’ tissue in inflammatory diseases. The company presented data from preclinical studies at the American Society for Hematology meeting in December that it’s using to support advancing into Phase 1 studies.

Dive Insight:

The acquisition extends a streak of genetic medicine deals undertaken by Lilly, which has used collaborations and buyouts to amass a pipeline of gene therapies and gene editing treatments for high cholesterol, hearing loss and other conditions. It’s also at least the fifth recent buyout of a company working on technology for making “in vivo” cell therapies, which could be more convenient alternatives to their complicated “ex vivo” counterparts.

The deal also offers Orna’s backers a return on their investment in a company that’s drawn the interest of multiple large drugmakers but has also reportedly laid off staff.

Like the “ex vivo” treatments in which technicians genetically alter patient cells in a lab, Orna’s lead program, called ORN-252, also aims to weaponize a person’s immune defenders against disease. However, rather than modifying cells outside the body, Orna’s treatment stimulates cells inside the body to produce a protein that can help them find a disease target — in ORN-252’s case, a protein flag on malfunctioning B cells. 

That target, CD19, is also the focus of an array of cancer-fighting cell therapies. Several companies are repurposing the approach against inflammatory diseases like lupus, following encouraging results from academic studies.

“Early autologous CAR-T studies have shown the promise of cell therapy for patients with autoimmune diseases, but the complexity, cost, and logistics of ex vivo approaches make it challenging to deliver these breakthroughs to the broader population of patients who need them," said Francisco Ramírez-Valle, Lilly’s senior vice president of immunology research and early clinical development, in a statement.

The acquisition also hands Lilly some assets that have been partnered elsewhere. Orna previously struck deals with Vertex Pharmaceuticals to make in vivo gene therapies and with Merck & Co. to develop next-generation vaccines.

Orna also has an alliance in place with China’s Shanghai Simnova Biotech to develop a cancer cell therapy.