Eli Lilly to Acquire Kelonia Therapeutics, Expanding In Vivo CAR-T Cell Therapy Capabilities
Eli Lilly has announced a deal to acquire Kelonia Therapeutics, gaining access to KLN-1010, a potentially first-in-class lentiviral in vivo CAR-T therapy currently in Phase 1 trials for relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma, with data recently featured at the 2025 ASH Annual Meeting plenary session. The acquisition also brings Kelonia’s in vivo gene delivery and integration platform, which Lilly views as broadly applicable across its genetic medicine programs.
The distinction between in vivo and ex vivo CAR-T is significant. Conventional CAR-T therapies require extracting a patient’s T cells, engineering them outside the body, and reinfusing them—a process that is expensive, time-consuming, and logistically complex. In vivo approaches aim to deliver the genetic programming directly into the patient, potentially eliminating the manufacturing bottleneck and reducing the cost and accessibility barriers that have limited CAR-T’s reach. Lilly’s acquisition of Kelonia signals a conviction that in vivo delivery is not merely theoretical but close enough to clinical reality to justify an acquisition at Phase 1. The myeloma data presented at ASH was presumably the evidence that tipped the decision.