Eli Lilly out to redesign itself as a biotech

Look for Eli Lilly to start looking more like a biotech company. That's the word from Lilly CEO--and newly named Chairman--John Lechleiter (photo), who used a speech in Indianapolis Wednesday to talk up the role of personalized medicine in tailoring new therapies to specific patient populations and speeding new drugs to the market.

"We're flat-out rejecting the conventional wisdom that says it must take 10 to 15 years, and a billion dollars-plus, to bring a single new molecule to patients," Lechleiter told a crowd at the Economic Club of Indiana. "We're still a proud, Indiana-based company, but folks, this is not your grandfather's Lilly. It can't be anymore."

Lechleiter also ruled out major acquisitions, but opened the door wider to new development pacts with other companies. And biotech drugs will be Lilly's preferred choice from now on.

- read the AP report

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Lilly developing biotech drugs the old-fashioned way (July 2007)