Eli Lilly, an American pharmaceutical company, has been working to establish a stronger footprint in genetic medicine over the past few years. Recently, the company revealed plans to establish a Boston research center that will use DNA- and RNA- based technologies to develop novel drugs.
The two therapies have already advanced into human testing, one targeting Parkinson’s disease and the other targeting dementia. Its biggest move has been acquiring Prevail Therapeutics in late 2020.
Since then, the firm has linked deals with biotech firms like Entos Pharmaceuticals and ProQR Therapeutics, aiming to enlarge the toolkit of genetic technologies at its dumping.
The pipeline of Lilly is also starting to highlight these efforts. Last year, in an investor presentation, the firm noted how genetic medicines have come to account for more than 20% of its immunology, diabetes, and neuroscience research portfolio which is expected to grow further with the launch of Lilly’s new center.
Andrew Adams, the firm’s vice president of genetic medicine, said that investigation would be directed at a few areas, including diabetes and neuroscience. In addition, Lilly will be directing on medicines acting at the nucleic acid level to innovate an entirely new class that will target the root cause of the disease. This strategy is different than medicines available at present.
Joining Adams as fellow co-director is CEO of Prevail, Franz Hefti. In the same statement, Hefti added that the institute would strengthen its efforts for treating neurodegenerative disease and help to deploy Lilly’s genetic medicine research and platforms.
Lilly said that along with the intended hiring for the new institute, it expects the prevail site in New York to grow to include 200 scientists.
To build around an earlier biotech acquisition, Lilly will follow the same strategies it established with Loxo Oncology, which it purchased for $8 billion and did the groundwork for its expansion in cancer drug development.
Source Credit - https://www.biopharmadive.com/news/lilly-genetic-medicine-institute-dna-rna/619214/