{"entity":{"id":"emergence-therapeutics","kind":"company","name":"Emergence Therapeutics","aka":[],"tldr":"Emergence Therapeutics was a German start-up making an antibody that carries a cancer-killing drug to a protein called Nectin-4, which is found on most bladder cancers. Eli Lilly bought the company in 2023.","summary":"Emergence Therapeutics was a Duisburg, Germany based antibody-drug conjugate developer whose lead candidate, ETx-22, targets Nectin-4, a surface protein overexpressed in most urothelial (bladder) cancers and the target of the approved ADC enfortumab vedotin (Padcev). The company was founded with Heidelberg Pharma as a founding investor. In June 2023 Eli Lilly agreed to acquire all shares of Emergence; terms were not disclosed, although Heidelberg Pharma stated it would receive USD 7 million for its stake. The acquisition formed part of Lilly's renewed push into ADCs alongside its Mablink Bioscience purchase later that year. The former company domain now redirects to lilly.com.","asOf":"2026-09-10","links":[{"label":"Official website","url":"https://www.lilly.com/"},{"label":"BioPharma Dive: Lilly to acquire Emergence","url":"https://www.biopharmadive.com/news/lilly-acquire-emergence-adc-cancer-drugs/654326/"}],"tags":[],"related":["src-biopharma-dive"],"cancers":["urothelial"],"sections":["adcs"],"technologies":["adc"],"targets":["nectin4"],"drugs":[],"companies":[],"institutions":[],"pathways":[],"terms":[],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":[],"keyPapers":[],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":["Company website is offline; emergencetx.com redirects to lilly.com, which is what the website field records. Earlier venture financing (reported elsewhere as a Series A in 2022) could not be sourced from a fetched primary page and is omitted. Development stage of ETx-22 at acquisition not stated in the fetched source."],"hq":"Duisburg","country":"DE","companyType":"biotech","website":"https://www.lilly.com/","stage":"acquired","investors":[],"funding":[{"round":"Acquisition","year":2023,"source":"https://heidelberg-pharma.com/en/press-investors/announcements/press-releases-and-ad-hoc-announcements/ah-heidelberg-pharma-sells-minority-shareholding-in-emergence-therapeutics","note":"Deal terms not disclosed; founding investor Heidelberg Pharma expected about USD 7 million for its stake plus up to USD 5 million in milestones"}],"acquiredBy":"eli-lilly"},"route":"/companies/emergence-therapeutics/","neighbours":{"collection":[{"id":"src-biopharma-dive","kind":"collection","name":"BioPharma Dive","route":"/collections/src-biopharma-dive/"}],"cancer":[{"id":"urothelial","kind":"cancer","name":"Bladder & urothelial cancer","route":"/cancers/urothelial/"}],"section":[{"id":"adcs","kind":"section","name":"Antibody-Drug Conjugates","route":"/fronts/adcs/"}],"technology":[{"id":"adc","kind":"technology","name":"Antibody-drug conjugate (ADC)","route":"/technologies/adc/"}],"target":[{"id":"nectin4","kind":"target","name":"Nectin-4","route":"/targets/nectin4/"}],"company":[{"id":"eli-lilly","kind":"company","name":"Eli Lilly (incl. Loxo)","route":"/companies/eli-lilly/"}]}}