Eli Lilly Biotechnology Center was presented in San Diego, California on March 1, 2023.
Mike Blake | Reuters
Eli Lilly On Tuesday, he said that he would spend 5 billion dollars to build a manufacturing center in the county of Goodland, Virginia, in order to strengthen the production capacity of targeted cancer drugs and other treatments – the first in a series of American investments provided by the drug manufacturer.
The company announced in February that it would spend at least 27 billion dollars to build four new national manufacturing factories, adding 23 billion dollars in previous investments since 2020. Eli Lilly said that it will announce the three remaining American sites this year and plans to start doing medicines in the four facilities within five years.
Medication manufacturers rushed to stimulate their production in the United States while President Donald Trump threatens to repress the industry with prices on imported pharmaceutical products. Trump said these levies encourage companies to re-shore production after the manufacture of internal medicines has decreased considerably over the past decade.
In a statement on Tuesday, Eli Lilly said that the new Virginia factory will develop active ingredients for cancer and autoimmune drugs, as well as other advanced treatments. It will be the first site of active ingredient and dedicated drug products from the company for its bioconjugated platform and its portfolio of monoclonal antibodies.
Eli Lilly said that the installation will particularly stimulate the domestic manufacturing of targeted treatments called conjugate drugs on antibodies – a type of bioconjug which connects a monoclonal antibody with a toxic “payload” to kill cancer cells. Eli Lilly is one of several pharmaceutical companies that are currently developing or marketing these drugs, which drug manufacturers are also studying under autoimmune conditions and other diseases.
“This is a new ability to allow the growth of pipelines. We have a number of new assets that will use both biologicals but also these antibody drugs,” said Dave Ricks, CEO of Eli Lilly, in an interview with CNBC. “This site will be unique since we are able to do this kind of medication for us – we do not currently have this capacity in the company – and even put it in the form of a drug product, therefore in the bottle and ships it.”
Ricks said that the company would move a certain production of third parties and “other nodes in our network, mainly from Europe”, to the new site of Virginia.
Eli Lilly chose the state for the new factory “due to the location, logistics, labor and frankly, just a site ready to leave,” added Ricks. He said the construction started on installation in previous years for different industrial use.
“Now, public services and all these things are all ready to ride, and we are a little in a hurry to start them as our pipeline progresses,” said Ricks.
David Ricks, CEO, Eli Lilly
Scott Mlyn | CNBC
He said that “most of the construction in America was really linked to the tax situation” rather than the threat of pharmaceutical prices, adding that “it is more logical to build in the United States than ever”. Ricks previously praised the Trump Trump’s tax reductions and jobs to push the business to increase its American manufacturing investments.
This legislation, adopted by a congress with a republican majority during the first term of Trump, was the most important revision of the tax code in almost three decades and reduced the tax rate of companies to 21%, among other efforts.
Eli Lilly said he would use advanced technologies such as automatic learning and artificial intelligence on the site, which “will allow an execution to the right to the right, all in support of the safe and reliable supply of drugs”.
The company said that the site would provide more than 650 new jobs in Virginia, including engineers, scientists, operations staff and laboratory technicians. He will also create 1,800 construction jobs in the region, said the company.
The other American plants in Eli Lilly include sites in North Carolina, Indiana and Wisconsin.
The new American investments are based on the success of the weight loss medication of Eli Lilly Zepbounde and Diabetes Diabetes Mounjaro, which has allowed to dominate the booming market for so-called GLP-1 drugs with rival treatments from treatment Novo Nordisk. The two companies have channeled billions to increase the manufacturing capacity of these drugs, which has helped to mitigate shortages of treatments in the United States
But Eli Lilly’s new investments are not only dedicated to current and future treatments for obesity and diabetes. The company traces its future beyond Zepbound and Mounjaro, in the hope of providing medication from its large pipeline of cancer products, Alzheimer’s disease and other conditions.
– Angelica Peebles of CNBC contributed to this report.
