Eli Lilly and Company has announced plans to establish a new drug delivery and device innovation center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Lilly Cambridge Innovation Center will serve as a portal for external partnerships and collaboration activities with the company’s existing research facilities in San Diego, New York City, and Indianapolis.

Construction of the Lilly Cambridge Innovation Center will begin immediately, with an expected occupancy by the end of 2015. Over the next two years, the company will hire about 30 scientists and engineers to fulfill the center’s work. When fully operational, the center will increase the company’s delivery and device research and development space by nearly 50% while increasing its staff by 25%.

The investment in Cambridge is part of the company’s planned growth strategy in research and development of drug delivery and device technologies and “underscores Lilly’s commitment to providing meaningful innovation in this arena,” said Jan Lundberg, Ph.D., executive vice president of science and technology and president of Lilly Research Laboratories, in a company release. “New drug delivery and device innovation is critically important to Lilly’s growing portfolio of potential medicines, particularly in our focus areas of diabetes, neurodegeneration, immunology, and pain. The best therapies of the future will marry breakthrough scientific discovery with customer-friendly devices. That’s what will make life better for people who need our medicines and give Lilly a true competitive edge.”

More than half of the company’s pipeline now comprises biologics that require some type of injection. The company expects its revenues from device-enabled products to double by 2020.

Source: Eli Lilly and Company