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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowEli Lilly and Co. and Purdue University on Friday announced an expanded collaboration agreement, with the Indianapolis drugmaker planning to invest up to $250 million over the next eight years to foster pharmaceutical innovation.
The initiative, called Lilly-Purdue 360, is focused on efforts including discovering medicines, streamlining the process of taking medicines from the lab to clinical applications, supply chains and workforce development.
“It will be focused on accelerating innovation at every stage of the work we do,” Lilly CEO David Ricks said, “discovering new molecules change, turning those molecules into medicines through process, development and manufacturing excellence, and then also on talent training the workforce of the future to work with Lilly and other advanced pharmaceutical companies.”
The partnership holds the potential to be the largest industry-academic agreement of its kind in the United States, Purdue President Mung Chiang said.
The Lilly-Purdue 360 Initiative will have specific focuses for pharmaceutical innovation, including:
- Applying artificial intelligence, or AI, to traditional drug discovery.
- Facilitating potential treatments in Phase 1 clinical trials to regulatory approval and into manufacturing, a key focus of the $4.5 billion Lilly Medicine Foundry being built in Boone County’s LEAP Research and Innovation District.
- Incorporating robotics, AI and data science into the manufacturing process.
- Workforce development for Lilly and Indiana.
An earlier agreement between the two institutions—funded by an initial $50 million commitment from Lilly, with an additional $50 million invested in 2022—was set to expire in 2027, but now is extended through 2032. As part of the collaboration, Purdue will provide space for Lilly researchers in West Lafayette and Lilly for Purdue researchers in Indianapolis and at the LEAP District (LEAP stands for Limitless Exploration/Advanced Pace).
Chiang said the corporate-academic partnership is vital for Indiana to both develop a talented workforce and have jobs for them to remain in the region.
“Without talent, work and jobs won’t arrive, but without jobs, talent won’t stay, and without constant innovation to rewrite the economic equation, you cannot sustain the co-creation of jobs and workforce,” he said.
On the hot topic of increasing innovation and efficiency using AI, Ricks said he believed early wins in AI could be in industrial applications because a company has control over its systems, making AI easier to employ.
“We can infuse algorithms and artificial intelligence and optimize those running things a lot better,” he said.
Ricks and Chiang made the announcement during a news conference Friday morning in the company museum at Lilly’s Indianapolis headquarters. As they spoke, they sat in front of a wall honoring inventors of key molecules, and Ricks pointed out that nine Purdue graduates are honored on that list of “Inventors of the New.”
“I’m sure that the years ahead, we’ll have many, many more,” Ricks said.
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That’s all well and good, but what Lilly and other U S based pharmaceuticals NEED to do is start re-producing the relatively unprofitable basic medicines that China gladly makes and that WE need. They could write it off as ‘philanthropy’.
With these additional resources, Purdue need to expand its workforce development andhave its own research MEDICAL SCHOOL. Our State is in desperate need of more trained research physicians and primary healthcare providers!!!!!!!!!!! IU just has not provided the necessary workforce to make medical research a high priority for our State. I applaud Purdue for working with Lilly. Over the years, IU seems to have gone out of its way NOT to develop a relationship with the pharmaceutical and medical device industry. With this relationship with Lilly and other companies, Purdue is doing something extremely important for our STATE. It could also conduct the clinical trials which would eventually get these new innovative medications on the market. Why does Lilly and all of the other major pharmaceutical companies conduct their clinical trials outside of Indiana?
Phillip D. Toth, MD, FACP
Well said, Dr. Toth