Eli Lilly has announced plans to spin off its Elanco animal health business, ending months of uncertainty. The US drugmaker said it will file a registration in the coming weeks with the US Securities and Exchange Commission for a potential initial public offering (IPO).

The company intends to sell up to 20% of Elanco but has not yet determined how many shares it will offer or the price range. It expects to complete the IPO process during the second half of 2018.

Lilly said last October that it was considering either spinning off or selling its animal health division to maximize shareholder value, despite having made two major acquisitions in the past three years.  In January 2015, Lilly paid $5.4 billion for Novartis’s animal health unit, followed two years later by the purchase of Boehringer Ingelheim’s pet vaccines portfolio for $885 million.

“Based on our strategic review, we concluded that after-tax value for Lilly shareholders would be maximized by pursuing an initial public offering of Elanco,” said David Ricks, Lilly’s chairman and CEO. “We believe this will allow Elanco to efficiently deploy its resources to those growth opportunities that best serve its customers. In addition, this will provide Lilly even greater focus on the human pharmaceutical business to pursue our purpose of creating life-changing medicines for patients.”

Lilly added that Elanco's headquarters would remain in Greenfield, Indiana, following the spinoff and no job reductions were planned.

In separate news, Lilly has signed an exclusive multi-year collaboration agreement with Anima Biotech to discover and develop translation inhibitors for several protein targets.

Anima said it is pioneering Translation Control Therapeutics, a new class of drugs that control protein translation. “Small molecule drugs work by binding to disease-causing proteins to modify their chemical activity but most proteins lack accessible binding sites and as a result, many diseases remain without effective treatments. Anima’s Translation Control Therapeutics platform is a new strategy against these undruggable target proteins,” explained Yochi Slonim, Anima Biotech’s co-founder and CEO.

Anima will receive $30 million in upfront payments and $14 million in research funding, and could also receive up to $1.05 billion if all future development and commercial milestones are achieved. In addition, the New Jersey-based biotech will be entitled to receive low to mid single-digit tiered royalties on sales of any Lilly products resulting from the collaboration.

Lilly will be responsible for clinical development and commercialization of products generated by the collaboration.