Jacob Van Naarden

Executive VP & President of Lilly Oncology, Lilly (Eli)

Search every verified Jacob Van Naarden interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Jacob Van Naarden, Executive Vice President and President of Lilly Oncology at Eli Lilly, discussed the company’s business development strategy and oncology pipeline in interviews at the ASCO conferences in 2025 and 2026. In 2026, he stated that “nothing is off the table” for dealmaking within medicine-making, describing a “two-prong strategy” involving a high volume of early-stage, relatively low-cost deals alongside larger opportunities. He said the company evaluates deals based on the compelling nature of the science and patient opportunity rather than arbitrary size limits, and noted that Lilly’s financial strength, driven largely by its GLP-1 weight-loss business, provides a “generational opportunity” to redeploy capital across disease areas, including recent expansions into infectious disease. In 2025, Van Naarden highlighted Lilly’s historical presence in oncology, calling it the company’s second-largest therapeutic area, and said success with incretins allows reinvestment in other areas. He discussed a hypothesis that certain cancer medicines could be more impactful in newly diagnosed or early-stage patients when combined with existing treatments, and mentioned a large randomized phase three development program with four studies enrolling globally. He also noted that only 7% of U.S. cancer patients enroll in clinical trials, calling that figure “a rounding error,” and said Lilly has created a small internal team to investigate barriers to trial participation.