Eli Lilly has announced it will acquire Merida Biosciences, a biotechnology company advancing a new class of precision therapeutics for serious autoimmune and allergic diseases.
Lilly will pay Merida up to $2.875bn in cash, inclusive of an upfront payment and contingent milestone payments.
Merida is developing biologics engineered to selectively degrade pathogenic autoantibodies, the disease-causing agents behind a range of immune-mediated conditions. The precision degradation approach is intended to address the biological cause of these diseases, rather than broadly suppressing the immune system, as many current therapies do.
Merida’s lead program, MER511, is in phase 1 development for Graves’ disease and thyroid eye disease (TED), conditions driven by thyroid-stimulating immunoglobulins, which are autoantibodies that activate the thyroid-stimulating hormone receptor.
Graves’ disease affects approximately three million people in the US, and patients face elevated cardiovascular risk and mortality. Roughly 25-40% of people with Graves’ disease go on to develop TED, which can cause pain, disfigurement and, in severe cases, vision loss.
While there are approved treatments for both conditions, none directly target the autoantibodies that cause them. Because pathogenic autoantibodies drive a wide range of serious diseases, Merida’s platform has potential application well beyond its lead programme.
The company’s pipeline also includes MER769, a preclinical programme focused on food allergy, asthma, chronic spontaneous urticaria and other diseases driven by the antibody responsible for triggering allergic reactions, along with earlier-stage programs in kidney diseases such as membranous nephropathy and other immune-mediated conditions.
Francisco Ramírez-Valle, senior vice president, Lilly immunology research and early clinical development, commented: “We’re building our pipeline around therapies that meaningfully change the course of disease, not just its downstream effects. Merida’s lead programme is designed to do exactly that: selectively and directly eliminating the autoantibodies causing Graves’ disease and thyroid eye disease, while preserving normal immune function, with initial phase 1 data already pointing to the potential for improved efficacy and safety. We see potential to apply this precision approach across a broad range of antibody-driven diseases.”
Adam Townsend, CEO of Merida, said: “Merida was founded to fundamentally change how autoimmune and allergic diseases are treated, by targeting the antibodies driving them directly, rather than suppressing the immune system broadly. Under our CSO and founder Dario Gutierrez’s scientific leadership, our team has advanced that idea from concept to clinical data, and what we’ve seen so far reinforces our conviction that this approach can make a meaningful difference for patients. Joining Lilly gives our science the resources and commitment to realise its potential for patients with immune-mediated conditions.”
The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2026.