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Eli Lilly and Company, the pharmaceutical company’s headquarters in Alcobendas, Madrid, Spain.
Christina Arias | Cover | Getty Images
Eli Lilly On Friday he said it would Acquire Versace, private property Obesity drug makerup to $1.93 billion to bolster the drug giant’s weight loss treatment portfolio.
Eli Lilly agreed to pay Versailles cash to shareholders, which will consist of an upfront payment and possible subsequent payments if Versanis achieves certain “development and sales milestones”.
Versanis, based in Oakland, California, which was founded in 2021 by biotech investment firm Aditum Bio, has one experimental drug for obesity and other potential conditions.
Eli Lilly’s share price rose 3% on Friday after the announcement.
The deal is Eli Lilly’s latest attempt to cash in on the weight loss industry’s gold rush, which kicked off last year then Novo NordiskThe popular injections of Wegovy and Ozempic have boomed in popularity.
appreciate 40% of adults in the United States are obese. Analysts predict that the global weight loss drug market will be worth $100 billion by around 2030.
Versace’s drug, pimagrumab, binds directly to specific cells in the body to reduce fat mass.
The company is studying pimagromab in a phase II trial in adults who are overweight or obese, and in another trial comparing the treatment with Novo Nordisk, Wiggoy and Ozimbik.
Bimagrumab works differently from Novo Nordisk and similar treatments from Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly. These drugs, known as GLP-1 agonists, mimic hormones produced in the gut called incretins to suppress a person’s appetite.
But Versanis said combining bimagrumab with those incretin-based therapies could lead to better outcomes for people with obesity and cardiovascular disease, which includes diabetes, kidney disease and disorders that affect the heart.
Eli Lilly works on many obesity treatments.
The company’s experimental once-a-week injection, retatrutide, helped overweight or obese patients lose up to 24% of their body weight after 48 weeks.
This exceeds the weight reduction caused by other obesity drugs.
Eli Lilly’s experimental obesity pill, orforglipron, also helped overweight or obese patients lose up to 14.7% of their body weight after 36 weeks.
The company is also pushing to have its type 2 diabetes treatment, Mounjaro, approved for obesity.
Correction: Versace’s drug, pimagrumab, binds directly to specific cells in the body to reduce fat mass. An earlier version misspelled the name of the drug.
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