Orna Therapeutics (Eli Lilly)

Orna Therapeutics, based in Watertown, Massachusetts, is the circular-RNA in vivo CAR company that Eli Lilly agreed to buy for about 2.4 billion dollars on 9 February 2026. Its engineered circular RNA, called oRNA, is delivered in lipid nanoparticles to induce CAR expression in T cells inside the body without lymphodepletion; the lead programme ORN-252 targets CD19 for autoimmune disease, and a BCMA in vivo CAR for multiple myeloma is preclinical. OnCo links it to multiple myeloma, to in vivo CAR-T and circular RNA therapeutics, to CD19 and BCMA as targets, to Eli Lilly, and to ideas on in vivo CAR-T as a vial on the shelf priced like a generic biologic. Manufacturing cost and time for living medicines is the bottleneck it aims to remove. Whether RNA-made CARs last long enough to clear a cancer is the open question.