Lilly's Success Depends On Strategic Partnerships

By Ed Miseta, Chief Editor, Clinical Leader

Eli Lilly and Company developed several new products in 2003. By 2009 the company had invested six years of R&D into building the portfolio, and the products were ready to move from Phase I to Phase II. That is when Lilly created its Development Center of Excellence (DCOE), with the idea that it would help the company be prepared when the products were ready to move into Phase III. The DCOE is now responsible for clinical development, product R&D, toxicology, and project management. Today, to say the DCOE is critical to ensuring the success of its pipeline would be an incredible understatement.

“John Lechleiter’s (Lilly president, chairman, and CEO) vision for the DCOE was to aggregate these disciplines together under one roof,” says Tom Verhoeven, SVP and co-leader of the Development Center of Excellence, Lilly Research Labs (LRL). “Success will be measured by the number of molecules getting through Phase III, as well as the data generated. The idea behind the DCOE was to become more reliable when getting data and to have the portfolio moving in a predictable way through the different phases of development.”