Ricks: Lilly ready to build on Zepbound approval
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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowThe CEO of Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co. says it’s “a historic time at the old pill company on the south side of the city” after receiving regulatory approval for the company’s highly anticipated injectable weight loss drug, Zepbound.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration earlier this month approved Zepbound for chronic weight management after studies found that the drug helped people lose about 60 pounds on average.
It is expected to be multibillion-dollar blockbuster for Lilly, which based on market capitalization is now the most valuable pharma company in the world.
In an interview with Inside INdiana Business Host Gerry Dick, CEO Dave Ricks said there are more treatments in the pipeline designed to make Lilly a leader in the weight loss medicine market.
“A triple acting [treatment] called retatrutide [is] in phase three studies,” he said. “We have an oral GLP one, so single acting but a pill, that’s in phase three now…and then we have six others in the Lilly pipeline. So we continue to innovate, and we aim to be a leader here. The WHO says a billion people in the world will have obesity by 2030. Our job is to help them.”
Zepbound contains the same compound as Lilly’s popular type 2 diabetes drug, Mounjaro, which launched last year and rang up sales of nearly $3 billion in the first nine months of this year, according to our partners at the IBJ.
The challenge now for Lilly, Ricks said, is meeting soaring demand for Zepbound. The company is in the midst of construction of a $3.7 billion manufacturing campus at the planned LEAP Innovation and Research District near Lebanon.
Ricks said Zepbound will primarily be made on that campus.
“The main site will actually be here, along with those other two I mentioned that are in the late phase pipeline: the triple acting and the oral,” he said. “So, that site is critical to the global rollout and to the growth of the company. We couldn’t go faster and we’re proud we chose to put that in Indiana.”
In May, Lilly surpassed Johnson & Johnson to become the most valuable publicly-traded drugmaker in the world based on market capitalization, which Ricks called a special moment in the company’s long history. He said he’s looking forward to continuing that momentum, particularly with the Zepbound approval.
“We have really what is the most prevalent chronic disease for adults in the world: obesity,” he said. “We can change that. We’re not saying the ‘cure’ word, but we we can resolve that issue for a huge swath of the planet. But we have to do a lot of things from here. What an opportunity that is.”