Eli Lilly and Company has announced completion of the first phase of a $560 million expansion to its biotech complex in Indianapolis. The investment is part of a $1 billion effort to strengthen and build the company's biotechnology drug research and development capabilities.

At a ceremony at its Indianapolis operations, company officials dedicated the crown jewel of the first phase of construction a state-of-the-art bio products pilot manufacturing plant that will help the company bring advanced biotech medicines to patients through more efficient, productive and dependable manufacturing processes. The company also announced the opening of a research support facility, into which 700 scientists, engineers and support staff will relocate.

Lilly initially announced plans for the biotechnology complex in 2002. In 2004, those plans were expanded to nearly twice their original size to better meet the company's pipeline of biotech drugs.

Reinforcing Lilly's leadership position. "These investments reinforce Lilly's position as a biotech leader," said John Lechleiter, PhD, Lilly's president and chief operating officer. "In tandem with our rich history of biotechnology, they give us a competitive advantage to discover, develop, and launch important new biotech therapies."

Lilly has been a leader in biopharmaceuticals since 1922, when the company began making and marketing insulin. Today Lilly is the fifth largest biotechnology company in the world as measured by total sales. Approximately 30 per cent (eight drugs) of its total drug portfolio is biotech medicines in several therapeutic categories, representing approximately $3.6 billion of the company's 2005 sales. Biotech medicines also represented one-third of the company's drug pipeline at the end of 2005.

The construction of the three buildings, along with Lilly's acquisition in 2004 of Applied Molecular Evolution a San Diego-based operation that conducts protein optimisation research accounts for a total biotech capital investment of approximately $1 billion. These investments, part of the company's planned growth strategy in the area of biotechnology, "prove that Lilly is confident in its future in biotech," said Lechleiter.