Eli Lilly expands partnership with Nimbus Therapeutics to develop oral weight loss drug

USA—Eli Lilly has strengthened its collaboration with Nimbus Therapeutics through a new research and licensing agreement focused on developing an innovative oral weight loss medication.

This expanded partnership marks a significant deepening of ties between the pharmaceutical giant and the biotechnology company as they work together to advance obesity treatment options.

Under the terms of the agreement, Lilly will provide Nimbus with an upfront payment of USD 55 million.

Beyond this initial investment, Nimbus stands to receive up to USD1.3 billion in additional payments tied to developmental and commercial milestones.

The deal also includes royalty arrangements for any oral medication that successfully receives regulatory approval through their joint research efforts.

Nimbus will leverage its specialized expertise in computational chemistry and structure-based drug design to discover a small molecule drug candidate.

The company’s task is to create a treatment that addresses obesity and other metabolic diseases.

This approach represents a strategic focus on developing more convenient oral medications rather than injectable formulations.

The two companies first established their working relationship through a partnership agreement in 2022 worth up to USD496 million.

That earlier collaboration centered on targeting AMP-activated protein kinase, an enzyme that plays a crucial role in the body’s energy regulation pathways.

Their initial joint efforts aimed to develop treatments for cardiometabolic diseases.

Ruth Gimeno, who serves as group vice president for diabetes and metabolic research and development at Lilly, expressed enthusiasm about expanding the collaboration.

She highlighted Nimbus’s proven track record in addressing complex drug discovery challenges.

Gimeno emphasized that developing this novel obesity therapy represents an important addition to Lilly’s ongoing efforts to advance innovative treatment options for patients living with metabolic disorders.

The obesity drug market has driven remarkable growth for Lilly over the past year.

The company’s weight loss injectable medication, Zepbound, which contains tirzepatide as its active ingredient, demonstrated explosive sales growth of 185 percent in the third quarter of 2025 compared to the same period in 2024.

This performance generated USD3.6 billion in revenue for that quarter alone.

The strong showing from Lilly’s cardiometabolic portfolio helped propel the company to a historic milestone in November 2025 when it became the first healthcare company to achieve a market capitalization of USD1 trillion.

Despite this success, Lilly continues to invest heavily in expanding its obesity treatment pipeline.

The competitive landscape intensified in December 2025 when rival Novo Nordisk received US Food and Drug Administration approval for oral Wegovy, which contains semaglutide.

This approval marked a significant development, as Wegovy became the first glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist available in pill form for weight-loss treatment.

Lilly has its own oral candidate called orforglipron, currently under FDA review.

The company has demonstrated its confidence in this medication by investing billions of dollars in manufacturing facilities in anticipation of regulatory approval.

The new partnership with Nimbus appears to represent another strategic move to strengthen Lilly’s obesity drug pipeline and maintain its dominant position in this rapidly growing market.

Nimbus has established itself as an attractive partner for major pharmaceutical companies.

Takeda acquired Nimbus’s tyrosine kinase 2 program for immune diseases in 2023 for USD 4 billion.

The drug from that acquisition, now called zasocitinib, advanced to Phase III clinical trials, with Takeda releasing data from these studies in December 2025.