Hot Topic: Lilly’s big investment into vaccines

ARE vaccines coming in from the cold?

That’s the question this week after Eli Lilly splashed out almost $4 billion on three vaccine biotechs, two of which are in the early stage of clinical development.

All are developing jabs for or related to infectious diseases.

Why’s this a big deal?

Because everyone knows that biotech investment is a notoriously faddish business.

And let’s just say vaccines and infectious diseases have both fallen into the “swipe left” department for a few years now.

So, to have the biggest player in pharma invest in biotech developers of infectious disease vaccines is noteworthy.

It’s like Anna Wintour tipping her glasses, in an approving manner, from the front row of the catwalk.

The first of Lilly’s purchases is Curevo, which is developing a shingles vaccine that could rival GSK’s Shingrix.  It’s in late Phase II trials. Curevo was a portfolio company of VC Medicxi, which led a $110 million Series B investment round last year.

The second is The Vaccine Company. Its lead candidate, for Epstein-Barr Virus, isn’t even in Phase I trials yet. It’s also developing jabs for a number of flaviviruses – really nasty things including West Nile Virus, dengue virus, and Zika.

Eli Lilly is forking out up to $1.5 billion apiece for each of these.

The third – Switzerland’s LimmaTech – is perhaps even more interesting. Novo Holdings invested in LimmaTech in 2023 through its REPAIR Impact Fund and the biotech’s CEO Franz-Werner Haas was on Optimum’s podcast, speaking about the challenge of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) last November.

Limmatech is developing vaccines to protect against bacteria where more and more strains are developing which are resistant to antibiotics – which is of course another area where investment has been slow.

It’s lead candidate is for S.aureus, the leading cause of surgical site infections. The idea is to help prevent infections before they occur – and thus stymie the development of resistant strains.

Maybe this is just Lilly splashing some of its plentiful cash, and it doesn’t mean very much.

But for developers of vaccines, or more generally those who are working in the areas of infectious diseases and AMR, this must be pretty heartening. Because everyone takes notice of a big spender.