The deals will help Lilly diversify its portfolio that is heavily weighted on the obesity juggernaut tirzepatide, marketed as Mounjaro for diabetes and Zepbound for weight loss.
Eli Lilly announced back-to-back business development deals on Wednesday, including a $1.2 billion play to buy inflammatory disease biotech Ventyx Biosciences.
Lilly offered $14 per share in cash for California-based Ventyx and its pipeline of oral drugs for inflammatory diseases. The deal is expected to complete in the first half of 2026, pending certain conditions, including stockholder approval and antitrust clearances.
The deal will help Lilly diversify its portfolio that is heavily weighted on the obesity juggernaut tirzepatide, marketed as Mounjaro for diabetes and Zepbound for weight loss. The company’s revenue is expected to more than double over the next few years, mostly thanks to forthcoming obesity pill orforglipron.
The star of the Ventyx takeover is the biotech’s NLRP3 portfolio, a pair of mid-stage oral drugs that target a key protein involved in the inflammatory cascade. Before the Ventyx acquisition, NLRP3 was a blind spot in Lilly’s pipeline.
Lilly’s takeover of Ventyx “demonstrates clear interest from big pharma in the NLRP3 inhibitor class to address a broad range of neuroinflammatory, cardiometabolic, and cardiovascular diseases,” analysts at William Blair told investors in a Thursday morning note. The deal could have some readthrough to other companies in this space, including Neumora, Neurocrine and BioAge, the analysts added.
Among the NLRP3 assets that Lilly will get is VTX3232, designed to be able to penetrate into the central nervous system, being tested for Parkinson’s disease and other cardiometabolic conditions. In October 2025, Ventyx announced that the drug reduced levels of high-sensitivity C-reactive protein—an inflammation indicator—by roughly 80% in patients with obesity and other cardiovascular risk factors.
The other NLRP3 asset, dubbed VTX2735, is restricted to the peripheral nervous system and is being trialed for recurrent pericarditis.
Aside from these NLRP3 programs, Lilly will also snag Ventyx’s inflammatory bowel disease drugs, including the S1P1R modulator tamuzimod, which has completed Phase II testing for ulcerative colitis, and the allosteric TYK2 blocker VTX958 for Crohn’s disease.
Also on Wednesday, Lilly entered into a global strategic partnership with the Seattle- and Massachusetts-based InduPro to advance novel cancer therapies. Specifically, the pharma is looking to leverage InduPro’s platform to develop bispecific and multispecific antibodies that can target antigens that appear close to each other on the surface of cancer cells. Such an approach, according to the companies’ press announcement, offers “improved safety, potency, and tumor selectivity.”
Lilly is putting $950 million on the line for the InduPro partnership, which will include up to three targets. The pharma has also promised an undisclosed equity investment in InduPro.
Wednesday’s pair of partnerships comes after Lilly on Tuesday revealed a second agreement with existing partner Nimbus Therapeutics. For $55 million upfront and up to $1.3 billion in milestones, the pharma will collaborate with its Boston-based partner on a preclinical oral obesity drug. The companies first linked up in 2022 to develop drugs for metabolic diseases
