Nxera Pharma Co., Ltd. announced on June 2, 2025, that it has achieved a development milestone under its multi-target collaboration and license agreement with Eli Lilly and Company targeting diabetes and metabolic diseases. The achievement triggers an undisclosed milestone payment to Nxera, which the company expects to receive in the third quarter of fiscal year 2025.
The milestone represents significant validation of Nxera's proprietary NxWave™ platform, which successfully identified small molecule binders to G-protein coupled receptor (GPCR) targets and solved the structure of the receptor in the presence of the small molecule, revealing its binding site. This achievement demonstrates the platform's capability to address previously intractable targets in drug discovery.
Collaboration Framework and Financial Terms
Nxera and Lilly established their multi-target collaboration in 2022, combining Nxera's GPCR-focused structure-based drug design capabilities with Lilly's extensive development, commercialization and therapeutic area expertise. Under the agreement terms, Nxera is eligible to receive development and commercial milestones totaling up to $694 million, plus tiered royalties on global sales.
Following this milestone achievement, Lilly will assume responsibility for further development and commercialization of the identified compounds, leveraging its established infrastructure and expertise in bringing therapeutic candidates to market.
Platform Technology and Drug Discovery Approach
The NxWave™ platform represents Nxera's core technology for structure-based drug design, specifically focused on GPCR targets. The platform's ability to identify novel molecules for previously intractable targets has been demonstrated through this collaboration milestone, where it successfully solved receptor structures in the presence of small molecules to reveal binding sites.
Dr. Matt Barnes, CSO and President of Nxera Pharma UK, commented on the achievement: "We're excited to have achieved this important milestone in this collaboration with Lilly, which marks a significant step towards developing novel treatments in these important areas of unmet need across diabetes and metabolic diseases. Our proprietary NxWave™ platform has continuously produced novel molecules for previously intractable targets, and we look forward to seeing further developments from this productive collaboration with Lilly."
Company Pipeline and Strategic Focus
Nxera Pharma operates as a technology-powered biopharma company pursuing specialty medicines for patients with unmet needs in Japan and globally. The company maintains an extensive pipeline of over 30 active programs spanning from discovery through late clinical stage, developed both internally and through partnerships with leading pharmaceutical and biotech companies.
The pipeline focuses on potentially first- and best-in-class candidates addressing major unmet needs in neurology/neuropsychiatry, metabolic diseases, and immunology and inflammation. These therapeutic areas represent some of the fastest-growing segments in medicine, positioning Nxera's discovery platform to address significant market opportunities.
The company employs approximately 400 people across key locations in Tokyo and Osaka, Japan; London and Cambridge, UK; Basel, Switzerland; and Seoul, South Korea. Nxera is publicly traded on the Tokyo Stock Exchange under ticker symbol 4565.
