Can Eli Lil­ly es­cape the boom-and-bust cy­cle that has long de­fined the phar­ma busi­ness?

In Jan­u­ary, Lil­ly CEO David Ricks was on stage with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. Ricks had re­cent­ly (if briefly) joined the tril­lion-dol­lar club, a rar­efied set of cor­po­rate chiefs whose com­pa­nies have touched or ex­ceed­ed that stratos­pher­ic val­u­a­tion. Huang, a long­time mem­ber, wears it with the re­lax­ation of his ever-present leather mo­tor­cy­cle jack­et. Ricks, more of­ten found in a sport jack­et, is new to the club.

To keep his spot, Ricks is try­ing to do what no phar­ma com­pa­ny has suc­ceed­ed in. He needs to turn the wind­fall from Lil­ly’s mas­sive suc­cess in weight loss in­to build­ing a pipeline — and new tech­no­log­i­cal ap­proach­es — that’s so broad, so for­ward-look­ing and so lucky, that he de­fies the grav­i­ta­tion­al pull of block­buster patent ex­piries that re­li­ably hauls down every high-fly­ing drug­mak­er. On stage with Huang at an Nvidia event in San Fran­cis­co, Ricks called it achiev­ing “ex­it ve­loc­i­ty."

Plus, news about Salspera and Ho­ba Ther­a­peu­tics:

🥊 Bimzelx bests Skyrizi in pso­ri­at­ic arthri­tis tri­al: UCB said its IL-17A/F drug Bimzelx showed “sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant su­pe­ri­or­i­ty” over Ab­b­Vie’s IL-23 block­buster Skyrizi on a mea­sure known as ACR50, which tracks pa­tient im­prove­ment across a range of cri­te­ria in­clud­ing ten­der and swollen joint counts. That said, Jef­feries an­a­lysts point­ed out that UCB has yet to re­port da­ta on sec­ondary end­points that al­so mea­sured skin clear­ance. “Un­til clar­i­fi­ca­tion, the un­re­solved ques­tion may tem­per en­thu­si­asm,” the an­a­lysts wrote, as IL-23 “typ­i­cal­ly per­forms well” in skin clear­ance. For now, they said, “the com­mer­cial im­pli­ca­tions ap­pear lim­it­ed.” — Nicole De­Feud­is

💰 Xenon tar­gets $650M: The biotech is look­ing to sell about 10.5 mil­lion shares at $57 each, as well as more than 877,000 war­rants. Xenon re­port­ed pos­i­tive Phase 3 da­ta ear­li­er this week for its epilep­sy can­di­date called aze­tukalner. — Rey­nald Cas­tane­da 

For the sec­ond month in a row, it ap­pears For­bion and RA Cap­i­tal are the main back­ers be­hind a new biotech formed around an in­ves­ti­ga­tion­al drug in-li­censed from Chi­na.

Sol­stice On­col­o­gy was forced out of stealth last month when its part­ner Har­bour Bio­Med dis­closed it had out-li­censed an an­ti-CT­LA-4 med­i­cine to the start­up. At the time, Sol­stice was char­ac­ter­ized as re­ceiv­ing back­ing from "ma­jor ven­ture cap­i­tal in­vestors."

Now, a reg­u­la­to­ry fil­ing this week hints at a nine-fig­ure fundrais­ing haul for the Boston-based start­up. The fil­ing in­di­cates Sol­stice has got­ten $121 mil­lion so far from eight in­vestors in an up to $298 mil­lion fundraise.

The mon­ey will like­ly sup­port de­vel­op­ment of the clin­i­cal-stage can­cer drug and pay for part of the li­cens­ing deal. The Feb­ru­ary pact car­ried with it a $50 mil­lion up­front cash pay­ment from Sol­stice to Har­bour, a glob­al biotech with hubs in Chi­na, the US and the Nether­lands.