Eli Lilly has signed a new drug discovery collaboration with Abbisko Therapeutics, building on an earlier pact from 2022, with potential payments to Abbisko of up to $1.9 billion. The companies’ agreement centers on generating new therapeutic candidates through joint research efforts. The announcement adds another high-value, milestone-driven partnership to Lilly’s growing external innovation engine, particularly as big pharma looks to de-risk pipeline creation via platform-linked collaborations rather than relying solely on internal discovery. For Abbisko, the expanded deal further underlines the commercial value of its capabilities with a Western payer-and-probable-pipeline partner. Separately, Lilly also struck a collaboration with BioArctic tying its BrainTransporter technology to an undisclosed Lilly program (listed under a different cluster below). Taken together, Lilly’s moves reinforce a strategy of combining discover-and-develop relationships with capability-driven technology access across therapeutic areas. The deal’s scale also highlights how discovery collaborations are being structured around multiple internal checkpoints, where value is unlocked as research progresses toward preclinical candidate selection and downstream options.