Lilly said its new option will help millions of adults with obesity access the medicine they need, including those not eligible for the Zepbound savings card program, those without employer coverage, and those who need to self-pay outside of insurance.
The five-year-old, clinical-stage drugmaker has already raised more than $213 million to develop therapeutics to treat rare endocrine disorders, a huge amount for a startup.
The longest continuous study of Indianapolis-based Lilly’s drug Zepbound to date included more than 1,000 patients.
Lilly is moving about 200 scientists and researchers who had worked in nearby Cambridge, Massachusetts, to the new center, and plans to add about 300 employees.
The Eli Lilly and Co. and Purdue University Research Alliance Center involves more than 50 researchers and 65 graduate students.
Novo is vying with Indianapolis-based Lilly for supremacy in the pharmaceutical industry’s fastest-growing new business, obesity drugs. The market is expected to reach $130 billion by the end of the decade.
MBX is focused on the discovery and development of novel precision peptide therapies for the treatment of endocrine and metabolic disorders, such as hypoparathyroidism, post-bariatric hypoglycemia and obesity.
Meanwhile, Lilly announced that Zepbound improved the long-term health of patients with obesity-related heart failure in a study.
Victoza yielded mixed results in a mid-stage study of Alzheimer’s disease, failing to meet its primary goal while showing hints that larger trials of similar drugs may be successful.
The spotlight is turning to Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co. as the next possible member of the so-called “Trillion-Dollar Club,” based on the drugmaker’s climbing stock price and swelling demand for its treatments for diabetes, obesity and other diseases.
Shortages of brand-name drugs made by Novo and Eli Lilly and Co. have allowed pharmacies to make what are essentially copies, and telehealth companies like Hims are selling them to patients at a steep discount.
The Roche drug is a once-daily pill, compared to Lilly’s tirzepatide, sold under the brand names Mounjaro (for diabetes) and Zepbound (for obesity), which is a once-weekly shot.
The expansion plan includes construction of a 100,000-square-foot building on its corporate campus and the addition of 100 jobs.
Stevanato, an Italian-based life sciences company that makes glass vials and syringes for pharmaceuticals, has committed to paying employees at its new Fishers facility no less than $70,000 annually.
Eli Lilly’s drug—Kisunla, the brand name for donanemab—is one of the few treatments developed for Alzheimer’s that modifies the underlying disease and will join just one other drug, Leqembi, on the commercial market.
The decision also could affect other major bankruptcies, including the $2.4 billion bankruptcy plan for the Boy Scouts of America that has been approved by a federal judge, lawyers said.
The race to score blockbuster weight-loss drugs like Eli Lilly’s Mounjaro and Zepbound is pushing one of the world’s largest population of people with obesity to creative lengths.
The Indianapolis-based drugmaker said Thursday it was taking legal action against at least six additional medical spas and weight loss centers that it claimed are selling counterfeit and compounded versions of tirzepatide, the active ingredient in Lilly’s diabetes treatment Mounjaro and weight-loss treatment Zepbound.
A Philadelphia-based company involved in drug delivery and logistics is working with the city of Fishers on an economic development deal that could result in a $40 million investment and 350 new jobs.
At issue is whether a drug developed by Point Biopharma, based in Indianapolis, infringed on a patent issued in 2020 and assigned to Purdue Research Foundation.
