In an ap­par­ent R&D about-face, Eli Lil­ly part­ners with Pre­ci­sion Bio­Sciences on genome edit­ing in a deal worth up to near­ly $2.7B

As a large multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tion, Eli Lil­ly has their hands in bound­less projects, from can­cer and im­muno-on­col­o­gy to di­a­betes, pso­ri­a­sis and Crohn’s dis­ease. But Fri­day they sig­naled a shift in their R&D fo­cus to­ward genome edit­ing, leap­ing in­to a cut­ting-edge field CEO Dave Ricks had shied away from as re­cent­ly as Jan­u­ary 2019.

The big phar­ma is pony­ing up $100 mil­lion up­front to part­ner with Pre­ci­sion Bio­Sciences, fo­cus­ing ini­tial­ly on Duchenne mus­cu­lar dy­s­tro­phy and two oth­er undis­closed in vi­vo tar­gets. Lil­ly is al­so ac­quir­ing $35 mil­lion worth of the biotech’s stock, and has the op­tion to de­vel­op three ad­di­tion­al in vi­vo ther­a­pies.

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