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Lilly Acquiring Kelonia In Largest Funded Biotech Startup Purchase In Years
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Eli Lilly announced Monday that it is acquiring Kelonia Therapeutics, a developer of gene therapies with a particular focus on cancer treatment, in a deal valued at up to $7 billion in cash.
Key facts
- Last June, meanwhile, pharma giant AbbVie snapped up Capstan Therapeutics, a biotech advancing in vivo engineering of cells through RNA delivery, for $2.1 billion
- Boston-based Kelonia launched from stealth mode four years ago, with $50 million in Series A funding led by Alta Partners, Horizons Ventures and Venrock
- Another big deal, announced in October, was Bristol-Myers Squibb ’s acquisition of Orbital Therapeutics, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based developer of RNA medicines that reprogram the immune system
- Eli Lilly announced Monday that it is acquiring Kelonia Therapeutics, a developer of gene therapies with a particular focus on cancer treatment, in a deal valued at up to $7 billion in cash
Summary
Per Crunchbase data, the high end of the purchase price represents the largest acquisition of a venture-backed biotech company in years. It’s also a quick progression by biotech standards. Per Lilly, Kelonia’s platform promises to not improve outcomes for patients, but to do so in a rapid, simpler “off-the-shelf format” compared to currently available CAR T-cell therapies. Kelonia’s vision is ambitious enough, and early results encouraging enough, to warrant what ranks as the largest acquisition of a venture-backed, private biotech company in the past 10 years, per Crunchbase data.