Eli Lilly Invest $2.1B in Indiana Pharmaceutical Manufacturing

Pharmaceutical giant, Eli Lilly, will extend its operations in Indiana, adding two additional manufacturing facilities with a $2.1 billion investment. Lilly will use the new facilities to produce active ingredients included in its genetic medicines and new therapeutics.  

The move announced Wednesday would support the domestic pharmaceutical supply chain and bring an estimated 500 permanent jobs to Indiana’s Boone County Research District. The new facilities are Lilly’s second United States development project announced within a year, and they piggyback on the $1 billion North Carolina pharmaceutical manufacturing investment the company announced in January.  

Lilly has also been involved in several recent pharmaceutical acquisitions, expanding the company’s footprint in the booming market of gene therapy and diabetes treatment. On top of their massively successful type 2 diabetes drug Trulicty, the company acquired Protomer Technologies to breach the Type 1 diabetes market. Before the pandemic, Lilly also snatched up Prevail Therapeutics to enhance its drug discovery pipeline. 

The company’s pharmaceutical manufacturing capabilities will support its rapidly expanding research capabilities and drug discovery processes. One of the company’s latest pharmaceutical partnerships will see Lilly and MiNA Therapeutics work in collaboration to research and develop small activating RNA therapeutics. Lilly also successfully deployed a monoclonal antibody treatment for COVID-19 and has connected with Amgen and United Health to expand the product’s reach. 

Eli Lilly’s domestic investment in pharmaceutical manufacturing and the pharmaceutical supply chain is a promising improvement to manufacturing capabilities, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic exposed several flaws in the US system, leading to shortages of medications, medical devices, and compounds like saline.  

Specifically, Lilly’s investment in an Indiana-based active ingredient manufacturing plant will help build the foundations needed to support a domestic supply chain for critical medications. In addition to Eli Lilly, companies like Continuus Pharmaceuticals and Civica Rx have recently announced significant additions to domestic manufacturing capacity with the support of state and federal governments.  

The US is by far the most productive pharmaceutical researcher globally, and more than any country, the US is responsible for drug discovery. From 1998 to 2007, US-based companies and researchers discovered about half of all approved drugs. Additionally, US consumers accounted for half of the world’s drug market. The missing link is that a significant portion of manufacturing occurs overseas, with fewer costs. 

Although the US market consumes such a significant portion of the world’s pharmaceuticals, it manufactures a smaller percentage than it uses and is not a leader in producing the raw chemicals included in final products.