Eli Lilly spending $3.8 billion to buy vaccine makers

Zoom in: Lilly will pay up to $1.5 billion for Curveo, a Bothell, Washington-based developer of a shingles vaccine, had raised around $200m in VC funding from Medicxi, GC Biopharma, Sanofi Ventures, OrbiMed, RA Capital Management, HBM Healthcare Investments, Adjuvant Capital, and Janus Henderson.

• It will pay up to $780 million for LimmaTech, a Swiss firm focused on bacterial pathogens like Staphylococcus aureus. It had raised $40m from firms like Tenmile, Repair Impact Fund, AXA Investment Managers, Novo Holdings, Adjuvant Capital and CARB-X.
• It will pay up to $1.55 billion for Vaccine Co., which is developing a vaccine for Epstein-Barr virus.

The bottom line: Lilly, which was the first company to distribute the polio vaccine, looks to be diving back into infectious diseases.