00:00Why venture into this area of vaccines, of infectious diseases?
00:04So, and this is really a re-entry for Lilly into infectious disease, which it hasn't been in for decades.
00:10What they said is they really want to get to the root of diseases rather than treating the symptoms,
00:15especially as we have a lot of infections that are developing antimicrobial resistant.
00:22And so the vaccine companies that they bought are developing vaccines for everything from Epstein-Barr,
00:27which causes mono shingles as well as staph infection.
00:31But it's part of a bigger push by Lilly to make sure they're really diversified away from diabetes, weight loss.
00:38They've obviously made a ton of money in that space, but at some point they're going to lose patent protection
00:42on that.
00:43And so the hope is that by buying a bunch of early stage companies, at some point,
00:48hopefully one of these candidates will become a blockbuster drug 10 years from now
00:51when they do lose the revenue from their ultra successful weight loss franchise.
00:55So is Novo Nordisk, for example, doing the same thing, trying to diversify and do deals away from obesity medications?
01:01Novo Nordisk has tried.
01:02You'll remember last year they, of course, went after MetSera, but lost in a bidding war to Pfizer.
01:07They haven't been nearly as aggressive as Eli Lilly has been.
01:10Eli Lilly this year has announced more than $20 billion of deals.
01:13That's more than they've ever done in a single year and more than any of the other pharma companies have
01:18done at all.
01:19And I think what's interesting about all of this is one of their execs said that from the deals that
01:23you do see,
01:24you don't even know about the tens of dozens that they're looking at every single week.
01:28They say they plan to continue to be active, so I wouldn't be surprised if we're here next week talking
01:33about another Eli Lilly deal.
01:34Well, thank you very much.
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