Eli Lilly’s new research and development facility in Boston’s Seaport district will focus on DNA- and RNA-based therapies, as well as other priority areas such as diabetes and obesity.
Eli Lilly on Tuesday debuted in America’s biggest biotech hub—Boston—with a new facility dedicated to the research and development of cutting-edge genetic therapies.
Dubbed the Lilly Seaport Innovation Center (LSC), the new site will expand the pharma’s U.S. footprint by 346,000 square feet and will be able to house 500 scientists and researchers. The LSC can also accommodate 200 staff from within the innovation hub Lilly Gateway Labs, which the pharma uses to connect earlier stage biotechs with its platforms and expertise.
The LSC will work on advancing RNA- and DNA-based therapies while also allotting some its resources to discovering new drug targets for Lilly’s priority disease areas, such as diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular diseases. The pharma will also leverage the LSC for R&D in neurodegeneration and chronic pain.
Daniel Skovronsky, chief scientific officer and president of Lilly Research Laboratories, in a statement said that the opening of the LSC will allow the pharma to collaborate “with leading institutions and new talent to continue delivering transformative medicines for the people who need them the most.”
With the LSC’s opening, Lilly brings the obesity competition closer to its chief rival Novo Nordisk, which in February 2024 opened an R&D site in the Boston area, according to the Boston Business Journal. The pharma first announced this expansion in March 2023, revealing at the time that the site will similarly focus on genetic therapies.
Lilly has steadily been gaining ground on Novo in the weight-loss drug race. In the second quarter of 2024, Lilly’s product sales impressed investors by easily beating consensus forecasts. Meanwhile, investors found Novo’s performance disappointing in Q2, with its shares dropping more than 7% shortly after the pharma released its earnings report.
Supply headwinds can partly account for this disparity, with Lilly clearing up the U.S. shortages for all doses of type 2 diabetes medication Mounjaro and weight-loss drug Zepbound. By contrast, while Novo has made progress on stabilizing its supply, one dose of Wegovy still has limited availability.
On the efficacy front, Lilly appears to have Novo beat as well. Last month, a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine found that Mounjaro could elicit 2.4% greater weight-loss than Novo’s Ozempic—and this gap widened even further through six and 12 months of treatment.
The rivals are continuing to compare their incretin therapies against each other. Lilly is currently conducting the Phase IIIb SURMOUNT-5 head-to-head study in overweight or obese adults without type 2 diabetes. Results from this trial are expected in November 2024. Meanwhile, Novo is looking to challenge Zepbound with its next-generation therapy CagriSema with a Phase III study that is expected to wrap up in the second half of 2025.
