Nxera Pharma Achieves Development Milestone in Collaboration with Eli Lilly Targeting Metabolic Diseases
Tokyo, Japan and Cambridge, UK, 2 June 2025 – Nxera Pharma Co., Ltd. (“Nxera” or “the Company”; TSE 4565) today announces that it has achieved a development milestone under its multi-target collaboration and license agreement with Eli Lilly and Company (“Lilly”) targeting diabetes and metabolic diseases, resulting in a payment to Nxera. The payment amount is undisclosed under the agreement with Lilly. However, Nxera makes this announcement in accordance with the timely disclosure requirements as the achievement of the milestone represents significant progress in research and development for Nxera. Nxera expects to receive the milestone payment in the third quarter of the fiscal year ending December 2025.
Nxera and Lilly entered the multi-target collaboration in 2022 to leverage Nxera’s GPCR-focused structure-based drug design capabilities and Lilly’s extensive development, commercialization and therapeutic area expertise. The achievement of this development milestone validates the use of Nxera’s NxWave™ platform to successfully identify small molecule binders to GPCR targets and to solve the structure of the receptor in the presence of the small molecule, thus revealing its binding site. Lilly will now be responsible for further development and commercialization.
Under the terms of the agreement, Nxera is eligible to receive development and commercial milestones totalling up to US$694 million, plus tiered royalties on global sales.
Dr. Matt Barnes, CSO and President of Nxera Pharma UK, commented: “We’re excited to have achieved this important milestone in this collaboration with Lilly, which marks a significant step towards developing novel treatments in these important areas of unmet need across diabetes and metabolic diseases. Our proprietary NxWave™ platform has continuously produced novel molecules for previously intractable targets, and we look forward to seeing further developments from this productive collaboration with Lilly.”
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About Nxera Pharma
Nxera Pharma is a technology powered biopharma company in pursuit of new specialty medicines to improve the lives of patients with unmet needs in Japan and globally.
We have built an agile, new-generation commercial business in Japan to develop and commercialize innovative medicines, including several launched products, to address this high value, large and growing market and those in the broader APAC region.
Behind that, and powered by our unique NxWave™ discovery platform, we are advancing an extensive pipeline of over 30 active programs from discovery through to late clinical stage internally and in partnership with leading pharma and biotech companies. This pipeline of potentially first- and best-in-class candidates is focused on addressing major unmet needs in some of the fastest-growing areas of medicine across neurology/neuropsychiatry, metabolic diseases and immunology and inflammation.
Nxera employs approximately 400 talented people at key locations in Tokyo and Osaka (Japan), London and Cambridge (UK), Basel (Switzerland) and Seoul (South Korea) and is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange (ticker: 4565).
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Forward-looking statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements, including statements about the discovery, development, and commercialization of products. Various risks may cause Nxera Pharma Group’s actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward looking statements, including: adverse results in clinical development programs; failure to obtain patent protection for inventions; commercial limitations imposed by patents owned or controlled by third parties; dependence upon strategic alliance partners to develop and commercialize products and services; difficulties or delays in obtaining regulatory approvals to market products and services resulting from development efforts; the requirement for substantial funding to conduct research and development and to expand commercialization activities; and product initiatives by competitors. As a result of these factors, prospective investors are cautioned not to rely on any forward-looking statements. We disclaim any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
