Eli Lilly will partner with Nimbus Therapeutics to develop an oral treatment for obesity and other metabolic diseases, through a multi-year research collaboration and exclusive, worldwide license agreement that could generate more than $1.3 billion for the Boston artificial intelligence (AI)-based drug developer.
The collaboration, the second between the companies, will entail Lilly applying Nimbus’ computational chemistry and structure-based drug design approach to an early-stage, small molecule discovery program designed to address what Nimbus said in a statement was “a significant unmet need” in obesity.
Lilly and Nimbus have been partnering for more than three years on developing a small molecule activator of a specific isoform of AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) to treat cardiometabolic diseases, under an up-to-$496 million partnership launched in 2022. That collaboration was one reason why GEN selected Nimbus among its Ten Companies to Watch in AI Drug Discovery, an A-List published in November 2024.
In February 2025, Nimbus announced progress in that partnership, namely the discovery of what it termed a highly selective isoform-specific AMPK activator.
Announcing the preclinical milestone, Nimbus signaled that it was looking beyond cardiometabolic disorders, into weight loss and management: “I look forward to continuing to apply Nimbus’ discovery engine to address targets across metabolic, cardiovascular, and obesity-related diseases,” Peter J. Tummino, PhD, Nimbus’ president of research and development, stated at the time.
In a statement today, Tummino said of the second Lilly partnership: “We are excited to collaborate with Lilly on another program, combining our discovery capabilities with their metabolic disease expertise to bring a much-needed new treatment to people with obesity and make a meaningful difference in their lives.”
$55M upfront
Lilly agreed to pay Nimbus $55 million in upfront and near-term payments tied to achieving milestones. Nimbus is also eligible to receive up to approximately $1.3 billion in total including development, commercial, and sales milestone payments, as well as tiered royalties on global net sales.
“We are pleased to deepen our collaboration with Nimbus, a team that has demonstrated exceptional ability to tackle complex drug discovery challenges,” stated Ruth Gimeno, group vice president, Diabetes and Metabolic Research and Development at Lilly. “Working together to develop this novel obesity therapy represents an important addition to Lilly’s efforts to advance innovative treatment options for patients with metabolic disorders.”
Those efforts include Lilly’s own internally developed oral obesity candidate orforglipron, a small molecule glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonist.
Last August, Lilly impressed investors with positive data in its third Phase III for orfoglipron showing that patients taking the pill lowered their weight by an average of 10.5% (22.9 lbs) vs. 2.2% (5.1 lbs) with placebo. All three doses of orforglipron (6 mg, 12 mg, and 36 mg) studied in that trial met the primary and all key secondary endpoints by showing significant weight loss, meaningful A1C reductions, and improvements in cardiometabolic risk factors compared with placebo at 72 weeks.
As GEN’s StockWatch reported in September, data from that and two other Phase III studies had analysts projecting $10 billion or more in annual sales, with some of the analysts trimming their estimates after data from orfoglipron’s second Phase III trial was positive but fell short of market expectations.
Gaining momentum
Lilly has gained sales momentum in head-to-head competition with Novo Nordisk to bring to market GLP-1 drugs for obesity and diabetes—led by tirzepatide, marketed for adult type 2 diabetes as Mounjaro® and for obesity as Zepbound®.
During the first three quarters of 2025, Mounjaro sales nearly doubled (up 94%) from $8.010 billion to $15.558 billion, including $6.515 billion garnered in Q3 (more than double a year earlier)—while Zepbound sales tripled from $3.018 billion to $9.281 billion, including $3.588 billion racked up in the July-September quarter, nearly triple (185%) Q3 2024.
Novo Nordisk finished January-September 2025 with DKK 95.264 billion ($14.907 billion) for semaglutide in adult type 2 diabetes (marketed as Ozempic®), up only 10% from DKK 86.489 billion ($13.533 billion) in January-September 2024. In obesity (marketed as Wegovy®), semaglutide racked up DKK 57.242 billion ($8.956 billion), up 49% from DKK 38.34 billion ($5.999 billion) a year earlier.
Lilly is one of several biopharma giants with which Nimbus has partnered in drug development. Gilead Sciences last year dropped a Phase II (NCT04971785) program to develop the Nimbus-discovered acetyl-CoA Carboxylase (ACC) inhibitor firsocostat (formerly GS-0976 and NDI-010976), in combination with semaglutide and another Gilead candidate, cilofexor, in cirrhosis due to metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH). Nimbus sold the drug to Gilead for up to $1.2 billion in 2016.
Takeda Pharmaceutical is developing the Nimbus-discovered tyrosine kinase 2 (TYK2) inhibitor zasocitinib as a once-daily oral treatment for moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis. Takeda, which reported positive data from two pivotal Phase III trials involving zasocitinib last month (NCT06088043 and NCT06108544), bought the drug from Nimbus in 2022 for up to $6 billion—including $4 billion upfront.
