Amgen and Eli Lilly collaborate

A global antibody manufacturing partnership has recently been announced by Amgen and Eli Lilly to expand the supply capacity available for Lilly’s prospective COVID-19 therapies. If one or multiple amounts of Lilly’s antibody therapies are promising in clinical trials and obtain regulatory approval, the collaboration will allow the two companies to rapidly scale up production and help a large number of patients around the globe.

M.D., Ph.D., President of Lilly Research Laboratories and Lilly’s Chief Scientific Officer, Daniel Skovronsky, stated: “Based on our initial clinical studies, we believe that virus neutralizing antibodies, including LY-CoV-555, could play an important role in the fight against COVID-19. Increasing the manufacturing capacity for our neutralizing antibodies through this collaboration with Amgen is a crucial next step and together we hope to be able to produce many millions of doses even next year.”

M.D., Executive Vice President of research and development at Amgen, David M. Reese, stated: “We are impressed with Lilly’s data, in particular the reduction in hospitalisations and are enthusiastic about the potential for these neutralizing antibodies as a therapeutic for COVID-19.”

Executive vice president of Operations at Amgen, Esteban Santos, stated: “We are proud to partner with Lilly and leverage our deep technical expertise in antibody development and in particular, our strong capabilities in the scale up and manufacturing of complex biologics. This is yet another example of the ways our industry is closely collaborating to combat this devastating disease and help patients around the world access new therapies.”