Pharmaceutical Executive Daily: Eli Lilly Presses U.K. Government to Raise NHS Drug Pricing

Welcome to Pharmaceutical Executive Daily, your quick briefing on the top news shaping the pharmaceutical and life sciences industry.

In today's Pharmaceutical Executive Daily, Eli Lilly presses the U.K. government to overhaul its NHS drug pricing framework as a condition of resuming investment in the country, Lilly also announces a deal worth up to $2.75 billion with AI drug discovery company Insilico Medicine to accelerate development of novel therapeutics across multiple disease areas, and Pharmaceutical Executive speaks with the co-founder and CEO of Soley Therapeutics about the company's biology-first approach to drug discovery.

Eli Lilly is calling on the U.K. government to agree to regular increases in NHS medicine prices and phase out the country's branded drug rebate scheme, known as VPAG, before it will restart investment in Britain. Lilly's international business president told the Financial Times he is in active discussions with U.K. ministers and is optimistic that a deal could be reached by summer, and the company is also exploring outcomes-based pricing models that would tie reimbursement for anti-obesity drugs to measurable health improvements such as patients returning to work.

Eli Lilly also announced a research and licensing collaboration with Insilico Medicine, a Hong Kong-listed generative AI biotech, in a deal structured with $115 million upfront and potential total value of up to $2.75 billion in development, regulatory, and commercial milestones plus tiered royalties. Under the agreement, Lilly receives exclusive worldwide rights to develop and commercialize a portfolio of novel oral candidates currently in preclinical development, while the two companies will jointly pursue additional programs built on targets selected by Lilly.

Finally, Pharmaceutical Executive sits down with Yerem Yeghiazarians, co-founder and CEO of Soley Therapeutics, on the company's cell stress sensing platform, a biology-first drug discovery approach built over 15 years that uses human cells as sensors to map how molecules drive cellular outcomes before identifying which diseases and patient populations to target. The platform combines proprietary imaging, AI, and automation to analyze thousands of cellular responses to drug exposure, and has yielded a pipeline spanning oncology, neurodegeneration, and metabolic disease backed by a $200 million Series C raise earlier this year.

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