Riding the success of the diabetes and obesity treatments Mounjaro and zepbound, which gave it the highest growth rate among global big pharma last year, U.S.-based Eli Lilly and Company has now bought three vaccine corporations at once.
Following Kisunla, an Alzheimer's treatment approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2024, the company has secured shingles and Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) vaccines, leading to analysis that it is taking direct aim at the market for preventing neurologic diseases such as dementia and stroke as a future growth engine.
Eli Lilly and Company said on the 26th (local time) that it will acquire three corporations: Curevo, Inc., the U.S. affiliate of GC Biopharma; LimmaTech Biologics AG, a Swiss vaccine corporation; and Vaccine Company, Inc., a U.S. biotech corporation.
The acquisition size, including contingent milestones, is up to $3.83 billion (about 5.76 trillion won). The total value of each corporation's deal is up to $1.5 billion (about 2.2 trillion won) for Curevo, up to $780 million (about 1.1 trillion won) for LimmaTech, and up to $1.55 billion (about 2.3 trillion won) for Vaccine Company.
Lilly said the purpose of the transaction is a strategy to "prevent disease at its source" rather than treat the consequences of disease.
In the announcement, Lilly cited links between infectious diseases and chronic neurologic disorders. It is paying attention to a series of studies on links between stroke, dementia and shingles, as well as between EBV (Epstein-Barr virus), a herpes-family virus, and multiple sclerosis (MS), blood cancers and stomach cancer.
Daniel M. Skovronsky, Lilly's chief scientific officer (CSO), said, "Research accumulated over decades shows that common infectious diseases can lead years later to conditions such as neurologic disease, cancer and infertility," and noted, "As antibiotic resistance intensifies, vaccines are increasingly becoming the only means of prevention."
◇ Getting a shingles vaccine cut dementia risk by 20%
Recently, international academia has repeatedly reported findings that shingles vaccines can reduce the risk of dementia.
A Stanford University School of Medicine team reported this year in the international journal Lancet Neurology that, in a cohort study tracking 460,000 residents of Ontario, Canada, those who received a shingles vaccine had about a 20% lower risk of a dementia diagnosis compared with those unvaccinated.
A prior study that tracked 280,000 residents of Wales in the United Kingdom for seven years found similar results. That study was published in the international journal Cell. In addition, a University of Oxford team reported in the international journal Nature Medicine that GSK plc's recombinant shingles vaccine Shingrix had better dementia prevention effectiveness than the existing live-attenuated vaccine.
The corporation drawing the most market attention from Lilly's acquisitions is Curevo. Curevo is a shingles vaccine developer established in Seattle in 2018 by GC Biopharma. GC Biopharma agreed to sell all 21,075,336 shares of its Curevo equity to Lilly for about 459.9 billion won ($303.92 million). The scheduled transfer date is on Aug. 24.
Curevo's key pipeline is the shingles vaccine candidate amezosvatein. According to GC Biopharma and Lilly, in a phase 2 trial comparing this candidate with GSK's Shingrix, it met major immunogenicity endpoints while cutting adverse events—such as fatigue, chills and injection-site pain—by more than half. Despite Shingrix's high preventive efficacy, there are known cases in which people forgo the second dose due to post-vaccination pain, fever and expense burden.
Lilly expects to commercialize the vaccines under development to raise vaccination rates and help reduce the risks of dementia and stroke. GC Biopharma has secured potential royalties and manufacturing orders from future vaccine sales through this transaction.
◇ GSK and Aribio also focus on "vaccine-based dementia prevention"
There is also analysis that global big pharma, after obesity and diabetes, is targeting neuroscience and preventive medicine as the next growth pillars.
Lilly is expanding investment in the central nervous system (CNS) space, having commercialized the Alzheimer's treatment Kisunla. Earlier, GSK also expanded research into dementia prevention effectiveness, led by its shingles vaccine Shingrix.
Related research and strategies are also continuing in Korea.
Professor Yeon Dong-geon of the Department of Digital Health, Kyunghee University School of Medicine, said that an analysis of big data on about 2.2 million Korean adults aged 50 and older, held by the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency, the National Health Insurance Service and the Health Insurance Review & Assessment Service (HIRA), found that recipients of live-attenuated shingles vaccines such as SK bioscience's SKY Zoster had about a 23% lower risk of myocardial infarction, stroke and cardiovascular death.
Meeting with ChosunBiz, Professor Yeon said, "A shingles vaccine not only prevents shingles itself but also shows it can help reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease by lowering the body's inflammatory burden." Yeon explained, "The shingles virus lies dormant in the ganglia and is reactivated, triggering systemic inflammation," and added, "Vaccines may reduce this inflammatory burden, potentially leading to reduced risk of various diseases, including dementia."
Aribio, which is developing AR1001, a novel oral Alzheimer's treatment candidate in a global phase 3 trial, recently acquired the CHA Vaccine Research Institute and is crafting a vaccine-based dementia prevention strategy. CHA Vaccine Research Institute is slated to change its name to AriBio LAB.
Meeting with ChosunBiz, Jeong Jae-joon, CEO of AriBio LAB and co-CEO of Aribio, said, "In future Alzheimer's treatment, 'inflammation' and 'immunity' will be the key themes," adding, "An approach leveraging the proprietary immune-enhancing platform 'L-pampo' held by the CHA Vaccine Research Institute could be one of the strategies for developing dementia treatments."
Meanwhile, Vaccine Company, acquired alongside Curevo by Lilly, is developing an EBV vaccine platform technology. EBV is known as the cause of infectious mononucleosis, but in recent years its links to multiple sclerosis (MS), blood cancers and stomach cancer have drawn attention. Another acquisition target, LimmaTech, is developing vaccines for bacterial infections with rapidly increasing antibiotic resistance, including Staphylococcus aureus, Neisseria gonorrhoeae and Chlamydia trachomatis.
References
Lancet Neurology (2026), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S1474-4422(25)00455-7
The Journals of Gerontology: Series A (2026), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/gerona/glag008
Cell (2025), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2025.11.007
European Heart Journal (2025), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/eurheartj/ehaf230
Clinical Microbiology and Infection (2025), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cmi.2025.05.003
KJIM (2025), DOI: https://doi.org/10.3904/kjim.2025.171
Nature Medicine (2024), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-024-03201-5