Josh Bilenker and his Loxo crew are tak­ing the reins on on­col­o­gy R&D at Eli Lil­ly, culling the weak and map­ping a new path

Josh Bilenker, Jake Van Naar­den and Nisha Nan­da came out of Eli Lil­ly’s $8 bil­lion Loxo On­col­o­gy buy­out with a bun­dle of cash and plen­ty of choic­es on what they could do next. Start a new com­pa­ny, go pub­lic. Live on the beach in 5-star lux­u­ry. Con­tem­plate the stars — in their own ob­ser­va­to­ry.

So what are they do­ing?

They formed a new ex­ec­u­tive team that is tak­ing over the man­age­ment of Eli Lil­ly’s hun­dreds-strong on­col­o­gy R&D group — es­sen­tial­ly us­ing Loxo as a base for a bold new ex­per­i­ment in Big Phar­ma R&D in an at­tempt to cre­ate a true biotech en­vi­ron­ment with the deep pock­ets of a top-15 in­dus­try play­er. They’ve re­cruit­ed David Hy­man from Memo­r­i­al Sloan Ket­ter­ing to join the team as chief med­ical of­fi­cer. And the man­date in­cludes culling out the on­col­o­gy pipeline, high­light­ing their star prospects and go­ing af­ter new pro­grams wher­ev­er they can find the best prospects.

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