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Eli Lilly will spend $4.5 billion to build a center aimed at finding better ways to manufacture its medicines. The facility, called the Lilly Medicine Foundry, will house development of new manufacturing methods with an eye toward efficiency. It's a strategy that's already paying off with Lilly's obesity and weight loss drugs Mounjaro and Zepbound, and Lilly wants it to propel the rest of its pipeline. The foundry serves a dual purpose: researching new manufacturing procedures, then putting them into practice with production of drugs for clinical trials. Lilly says the facility will be the first of its kind to combine research and production in a single location. "The idea is to take molecules from a bench in a lab to scaled for medicines in a pharmacy, and this research and development site will do that work," Eli Lilly Chief Executive Officer David Ricks said in an interview from the company's headquarters in Indianapolis. The center, which is slated to open in late 2027, will be equipped to make small molecules, biologics and genetic medicines. It will be near a $9 billion manufacturing complex Lilly is building in Lebanon, Indiana, to produce pharmaceutical ingredients like tirzepatide, the active ingredient in Mounjaro and Zepbound. The cranes and steel frames of the active construction site stick out amid the flat farmland, about a 40-minute drive from Lilly's Indianapolis headquarters.

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