With a coronavirus vaccine still months off, companies—including Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co.—are rushing to test what might be the next best thing: drugs that deliver antibodies to fight the virus.
The Indianapolis-based drugmaker said it will enroll about 2,400 residents and staff of nursing homes to test an antibody it is developing with a Canadian biotech. Nursing homes account for about 40% of U.S. deaths from COVID-19.
An experimental blood test from Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co. was highly accurate at distinguishing people with Alzheimer’s disease from those without it in several studies, boosting hopes that there soon may be a simple way to help diagnose the condition.
Under the agreement, researchers will study patients who used Lilly autoimmune therapies that are under consideration for the treatment of other autoimmune diseases, including inflammatory bowel disease and psoriasis.
In the past seven years, the drugmaker has received tax breaks worth nearly $40 million in exchange for investing more than $500 million at its Indianapolis properties.
Aarti Shah oversees Lilly’s global information technology, information security, advanced analytics and data sciences, and digital health.
The Indianapolis-based drugmaker said it is launching a global trial for the anti-inflammatory drug baricitinib, which it launched two years ago to treat moderately to severely active rheumatoid arthritis.
So far, the program has enrolled 275 people with diabetes. Health workers in the neighborhoods have completed more than 2,300 check-ins with them—helping them set up doctors’ visits, coaching them on how to shop for food, and helping them with dozens of related problems, from transportation needs to medical insurance.
The Indianapolis drugmaker also said it expects to begin dosing patients in a complementary clinical study in the U.S. in the coming days.
Dr. Daniel Skovronsky, chief scientific officer and president of Lilly Research Laboratories, said Lilly has already started “large-scale manufacturing” of the potential treatment.
The partnership marks at least the fourth program Lilly is pursuing to find treatments for COVID-19, a disease that has claimed more than 249,000 lives worldwide, including more than 68,000 in the U.S.
One senior administration official with knowledge of the discussions said Trump has no deep affection for Alex Azar but is unlikely to change Health and Human Services secretaries as the coronavirus continues to rage.
The Indianapolis-based drugmaker, which reported quarterly earnings Thursday, warned it could feel the effects of rising unemployment, a decrease in new prescriptions, and downward pricing pressure from government health care systems.
Eli Lilly and Co.’s breakthroughs during Wood’s 18-year tenure included biosynthetic insulin and the category-smashing antidepressant Prozac.
Eli Lilly and Co.’s treatment Emgality and Teva Pharmaceutical’s drug Ajovy were approved within months of each other in 2018.
The decision means perhaps tens of thousands of additional people can get tested at Lilly’s drive-thru, including people who work in grocery stores, pharmacies, banks and other places listed by the state as essential.
In a deal that could eventually be worth close to a billion dollars, Eli Lilly and Co. is teaming with a British biopharmaceutical company in one of the hottest areas in medical research.
Increasingly, as the planet warms, pressure is building from environmentalists, investors, consumers and the general public for corporate America to do something about it.
The Indianapolis-based drugmaker said it will combine its capability for quickly developing antibodies with AbCellera’s “rapid pandemic response platform,” with the goal of getting a treatment into clinics for human testing within four months.
Indianapolis-based Lilly, the 12th largest employer in Indiana with 10,600 workers in the state, said it didn’t have a specific timeline for how long the precaution would last.
