A rendering of Eli Lilly’s manufacturing facility in Houston, Texas.
Courtesy: Eli Lilly
Eli Lilly on Tuesday mentioned it is going to spend $6.5 billion to construct a manufacturing facility in Houston, Texas, to spice up manufacturing of the corporate’s pipeline of so-called small molecule medication, together with its carefully watched experimental obesity pill.
It is the second in a string of new planned U.S. investments by the drugmaker. Eli Lilly introduced in February that it might spend at least $27 billion to construct 4 new home manufacturing crops, including to $23 billion in earlier investments since 2020.
Eli Lilly mentioned it is going to announce the 2 remaining U.S. websites this yr. The firm expects to start making medicines in any respect 4 services inside 5 years.
That added manufacturing capability for Eli Lilly’s obesity pill, orforglipron, is essential as the corporate races to deliver it to market and tries to keep up its dominance within the booming market for GLP-1s. Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk have beforehand confronted provide constraints with their present weekly injections, as demand skyrocketed within the U.S.
“Our new Houston site will enhance Lilly’s ability to manufacture orforglipron at scale and, if approved, help fulfill the medicine’s potential as an obesity and type 2 diabetes treatment for tens of millions of people worldwide who prefer the ease of a pill that can be taken without food and water restrictions,” Eli Lilly CEO David Ricks mentioned within the launch.
Drugmakers have been scrambling to spice up their manufacturing within the U.S. as President Donald Trump threatens to impose tariffs on prescribed drugs imported into the U.S. Trump has mentioned these levies will encourage corporations to re-shore manufacturing after home drug manufacturing shrank dramatically over the previous decade.
In a launch Tuesday, Eli Lilly mentioned the brand new Houston plant will concentrate on manufacturing orforglipron and the corporate’s pipeline of different small molecule medicines throughout completely different illness areas, together with cardiometabolic well being, oncology, immunology and neuroscience. Small molecule medication, which frequently are available in pill kind, are extra handy for sufferers to take than injectable medicines and are typically simpler and cheaper to fabricate at scale.
Eli Lilly mentioned the positioning will deliver 615 jobs to the Greater Houston space, together with extremely expert engineers, scientists, operations personnel and lab technicians, and 4,000 development jobs.