Nxera Pharma has announced a significant development milestone in its multi-target collaboration with Eli Lilly, marking a pivotal advancement in the companies’ joint efforts to address diabetes and metabolic diseases.
This achievement, disclosed on June 2, 2025, triggers a milestone payment from Eli Lilly to Nxera Pharma, further validating the scientific and commercial promise of their partnership.
The collaboration, initiated in 2022, leverages Nxera’s proprietary NxWave™ platform, which specializes in structure-based drug design targeting G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs)—a class of proteins central to many metabolic processes. Through this platform, Nxera successfully identified novel small molecule binders to GPCR targets and elucidated the structure of these receptors in the presence of the molecules, a breakthrough that underpins the latest milestone.
Eli Lilly will now assume responsibility for the subsequent stages of development and commercialization. Under the terms of the agreement, Nxera stands to receive development and commercial milestone payments totaling up to $694 million, in addition to tiered royalties on future global sales. The specific amount of the current milestone payment remains undisclosed, but Nxera expects to receive it in the third quarter of its fiscal year ending December 2025.
This milestone not only signifies scientific progress but also highlights the growing value of Nxera’s drug discovery capabilities. The company’s pipeline now includes over 30 active programs, spanning neurology, immunology, and metabolic diseases, with several projects advancing through late-stage clinical development both independently and in collaboration with leading pharmaceutical partners.
Nxera’s leadership emphasized the importance of this achievement, noting that it demonstrates the company’s ability to deliver innovative solutions for previously intractable targets and to create value through strategic alliances with global industry leaders like Eli Lilly. The collaboration is expected to accelerate the development of new therapies for diabetes and metabolic disorders, areas of significant unmet medical need worldwide.
As Nxera Pharma continues to expand its footprint across Japan, Europe, and Asia-Pacific, this latest milestone positions the company as a key innovator in the biopharmaceutical sector, with the potential to bring transformative treatments to patients on a global scale.
