Jefferies shared a post on LinkedIn:
“Jefferies is pleased to have served as Exclusive Financial Advisor to Kelonia Therapeutics on its sale to Eli Lilly for up to $7.0 billion.
Kelonia Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biotechnology company whose lead program, KLN-1010, is a potentially first-in-class lentiviral in vivo CAR-T therapy currently in Phase 1 for relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma with clinical data recently highlighted in the 2025 ASH Annual Meeting plenary session.
This transaction exemplifies Jefferies’ capabilities in strategic advisory, assisting companies in achieving their strategic goals. Jefferies has now advised on eight billion-dollar-plus biopharma M&A transactions since January 2025, including seven of the top twelve by total value.”
Philip Ross, Chairman at Jefferies, shared the post, adding:
“Congratulations to the team at Kelonia Therapeutics on their sale to Eli Lilly. We’re proud to have acted as Exclusive Financial Advisor on this monumental transaction.
Congrats to Kevin Friedman, Charlene Stern, M. Travis Quigley, Michael Birnbaum, Kristen Hege, Mathai Mammen, Bob More, Bryan Roberts and the entire Kelonia team on this fantastic outcome.”
Later, Bernard Fox, Co-Founder, President, and CEO of UbiVac, joined in the congratulations:
“Agree!
Congrats to Philip Ross and his team at Jeffries LLC, and to all the amazing people at Kelonia Therapeutics who pulled off the translation of amazing science into patients at breakneck speed! But saving my biggest kudos to Dave Ricks and his visionary colleagues at Eli Lilly and Company, who pulled the trigger and made this leap to in vivo CAR T.
The Kelonia process holds promise to democratize this cellular therapy, simplify its administration, reduce cost, and make this off-the-shelf therapy available to a large swath of the planet. There will be bumps, but the path ahead looks bright.
I also think this will provide applications for other cellular immunotherapies. Specifically, TCRs against cancer’s DarkMatter antigens. These are novel new targets that are not mutated, some of which appear to be broadly shared, and also promote cancer.”
Recent Review on cancers ‘Dark Genome’ / ‘Junk’ DNA-derived cancer antigens.
Bright side of the dark genome: antigens for next-gen cancer vaccines
Authors: Xiao-Song Wang, Bernard A Fox
First in-vivo – Dark Matter Cancer vaccine-induced Dark Matter TCR.
UbiVac Presents 1st Report of In Vivo Generated T Cell Receptor (TCR) to Dark Genome-Derived Cancer’s Dark Matter
Other articles featuring Bernard Fox on OncoDaily.