Eli Lilly and Company and Purdue University recently announced a significant expansion of their long-time alliance, with Lilly’s planned investment of up to $250 million in the collaboration over the next eight years. And this deal, which has the potential to be the largest ever industry-academic agreement of its kind in the US, will look to advance innovation in the pharmaceutical pipeline.
Lilly-Purdue 360 Initiative: The Lilly-Purdue 360 Initiative aims to achieve several key goals, including discovering and accelerating the delivery of medicines to patients, bridging the gap between lab discoveries and clinical applications, creating more resilient and sustainable supply chains, and deploying innovative and scalable approaches to workforce development. This expanded collaboration is also expected to generate significant economic benefits for Indiana by creating a highly skilled workforce and fostering local innovation.
The Lilly-Purdue 360 Initiative also supports Purdue’s One Health initiative, which advances knowledge and innovation related to animal, human and plant well-being through novel interdisciplinary initiatives and partnerships with industry.
The earlier agreement, which was set to expire in 2027, will now extend with four new projects added through 2032. And it will engage existing joint programs, such as Lilly Scholars at Purdue and the Lilly and Purdue Research Alliance Center (LPRC). Purdue will also make space available for Lilly researchers on-site in West Lafayette. Purdue researchers will collaborate in Lilly facilities in Indianapolis and in Indiana’s LEAP Research and Innovation District.
Goals: To achieve the ambitious goals, Lilly and Purdue will concentrate on several key areas:
1.) Applying AI-based tools to augment traditional drug discovery methods while leveraging advancements in machine learning and big data analytics to explore disease mechanisms and personalized treatments
2.) Facilitating technology-enabled approaches to accelerate potential treatments from Phase I clinical studies to regulatory approval and technology transfer into manufacturing and critical focus areas of the Lilly Medicine Foundry
3.) Integrating robotics, AI, and data sciences to quickly scale manufacturing capacity more effectively, with improved compliance and greater sustainability
4.) Enhancing workforce development to ensure a strong talent pipeline to meet the demands of Lilly and other Indiana employers
KEY QUOTES:
“As potentially the largest single university-industry research agreement in American history, Lilly and Purdue are blazing a new trail to the endless frontier. As for our state, when its largest company and the largest university expand collaboration at a scale never seen before, especially in the backdrop of Lilly’s manufacturing facility in LEAP, today marks a monumental watershed in the generation of jobs, workforce and innovation along America’s Hard Tech Corridor. We thank Lilly for its pioneering impact on health and medicine in our society and for what is now the largest single research funding, from public or private capital, in Purdue’s history.”
Purdue University President Mung Chiang
“Accelerating the delivery of life-changing medicines demands a highly skilled workforce and continuous innovation across discovery, process development and manufacturing. Through this expanded collaboration with Purdue, we look forward to combining our strengths in advanced technologies and cutting-edge science to pioneer new methods of delivering next-generation medicines to advance human health.”
David A. Ricks, Lilly’s chair and CEO
