David Ricks, Lil­ly

Eli Lil­ly has a present for Pres­i­dent Trump. At a time Trump has been pound­ing on big com­pa­nies in gen­er­al and Big Phar­ma in spe­cif­ic for more US jobs and de­vel­op­ment, Eli Lil­ly is launch­ing an $850 mil­lion ren­o­va­tion plan for its US fa­cil­i­ties.

The In­di­anapo­lis-based Lil­ly un­veiled a blue­print to in­vest in its re­search labs, man­u­fac­tur­ing ops and its head­quar­ters in In­di­ana.

“Our fu­ture at Lil­ly is bright, as we’re on a path to launch 20 new prod­ucts in a 10-year time frame,” Lil­ly CEO Dave Ricks said. “As we have for our en­tire 140-year his­to­ry, we con­tin­ue to see In­di­ana and the Unit­ed States as at­trac­tive places to re­search and make the med­i­cines that we sell around the world.”

That mes­sage will sell well in Wash­ing­ton, DC.

The new projects in­clude an $85 mil­lion ex­pan­sion of its Trulic­i­ty (du­laglu­tide) de­vice as­sem­bly op­er­a­tions in the US, which should al­so help ap­pease Trump, who’s been par­tic­u­lar­ly fo­cused on bring­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing jobs “back” to the US. And Ricks hit hard on the new con­struc­tion jobs that would be cre­at­ed in 2017 as they pushed ahead with the cap­i­tal project.

Ricks may have found him­self out of step with the tenor and times in Wash­ing­ton DC ear­li­er this year, as the com­pa­ny fo­cused on trim­ming its staff. In ear­ly Feb­ru­ary, just weeks af­ter un­veil­ing plans to lay off 485 staffers that had been in­volved in the failed solanezum­ab pro­gram, the com­pa­ny spread word that it was look­ing for 200 re­searchers to take a “vol­un­tary ex­it.”

While Lil­ly spends a rel­a­tive­ly large por­tion of its rev­enue on R&D, for­mer CEO John Lech­leit­er al­ways made a point of keep­ing a care­ful han­dle on spend­ing over­all. And that in­clud­ed hir­ing.

At the end of 2015, Eli Lil­ly em­ployed 41,275 peo­ple, in­clud­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 23,425 em­ploy­ees out­side the US. But it’s al­so been ship­ping jobs over­seas. Five years ear­li­er Lil­ly em­ployed 40,360 peo­ple, in­clud­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20,300 em­ploy­ees out­side the Unit­ed States.

DC District Court Judge Christopher Cooper today granted Vanda Pharma’s request to require the FDA to disclose more info on the complete response letter for its sleep disorder drug Hetlioz.

The melatonin receptor agonist is approved by the FDA to treat non-24-hour sleep-wake disorder, a circadian rhythm disorder. But in 2018 Vanda filed a supplemental application to market Hetlioz as a treatment for jet lag, which the FDA rejected in August 2019, with few details on what Vanda needed to correct course, according to the company.

Codiak BioSciences has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, spelling an end to the employment of most executives, including founder Doug Williams, as the biotech says it “expects to consummate a sale.”

The eight-year journey at Codiak is nearing an end with Williams; CFO Linda Bain; medical chief David Mauro; scientific head Sriram Sathyanarayanan; legal and compliance chief Yalonda Howze; and SVP of HR Nicole Barna all packing up their bags in the first few days of April. Chief technology officer Konstantin Konstantinov will stay.