Eli \u2060Lilly<\/a> \u200bsaid on Monday it would buy privately held Merida Biosciences for up to $2.88 billion in cash, as it seeks to expand its pipeline of potential treatments for immunity-related and allergic diseases.<\/p>\nLilly has been on an acquisition spree, boosted by the booming demand for its obesity drugs. Its deal spending in 2026 has outpaced that in the prior years.<\/p>\n
Merida is developing medicines to selectively target antibodies that cause a range of immunity-related conditions.<\/p>\n
Its lead drug candidate, MER511, is in the early stage of development for autoimmune disorders such as Graves’ disease and thyroid eye disease.<\/p>\n
This story is developing. Please check back for updates.<\/p>\n
Choose CNBC as your preferred source on Google and never miss a moment from the most trusted name in business news.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eli Lilly and Company\u2019s logo is displayed during a press conference in Houston, Texas, U.S., Sept. 23, 2025.…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":328634,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[35],"tags":[9165,150,64,81,37520,210,1141,9166,1142,8396,152,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-1034872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-biotech-and-pharmaceuticals","tag-biotechnology","tag-business","tag-business-news","tag-eli-lilly-and-co","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-health-care-industry","tag-healthcare","tag-mergers-and-acquisitions","tag-pharmaceuticals","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1034872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1034872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1034872\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/328634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1034872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1034872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1034872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}