Eli Lilly Opens New Eco-friendly Biotechnology Center

Eli Lilly and Company (Lilly) has opened a new biotechnology center on the West Coast to discover and develop more biotechnology medicines. The Lilly Biotechnology Center – San Diego is located within an extensive hub of life science activity near the University of California, San Diego and other prominent biomedical research institutes.

John Lechleiter, chairman and chief executive officer at Lilly, said: “We are moving full speed ahead toward building a biotechnology powerhouse. The science, technology and talent at our new center in San Diego will help bring novel biotech medicines to patients faster and more efficiently, and reinforces Lilly’s commitment and contributions to San Diego’s burgeoning bioscience industry.”

Steve Paul, executive vice president of science and technology, and president of research laboratories at Lilly, said: “The results of Lilly’s transformation into a biopharmaceutical powerhouse are quite evident and very exciting, with over 50 percent of our mid to late-stage pipeline now consisting of biologics-potential medicines for a range of diseases, including diabetes, cancer, autoimmune diseases, musculoskeletal disorders and Alzheimer’s disease.”

AME, in collaboration with Indianapolis-based biotechnology research efforts, has made important contributions to building Lilly’s biotechnology portfolio. AME has helped develop eight of the approximately 60 molecules in it’s current clinical pipeline. It has helped design and engineer four molecules that are currently in pre-clinical development.

At the new San Diego biotechnology facility, the scientists from AME and DCRT-San Diego are drawing on each other’s expertise to further speed and enhance innovation. The center is mostly focused on discovering, engineering and conducting phase I and II clinical trials on potential biologic medicines, with an emphasis on cancer, diabetes and autoimmune diseases, areas of medicine that hold potential promise for biologic drug development.

Tom Bumol, vice president of biotechnology discovery research at Lilly and head of the new West Coast site, said: “We are optimising the synergies between AME and DCRT-San Diego by co-locating them. We in the scientific community have only scratched the surface of what is possible for biologic drug design, and collaborations such as this taking place at our new center will help lead to the next generation of biotechnology-based treatments for patients.”