Lilly’s Latest Partner

Eli Lilly & Co. has formed a partnership with Albany Molecular Research Inc. that furthers its creation of an outsourcing network. AMRI scientists will work at Lilly’s Indianapolis headquarters to support the drug company’s medicinal chemistry department.

To do the work, AMRI intends to hire more than 40 full-time synthetic chemists by the third quarter of 2012. It expects to recruit the majority of these chemists from Indiana and nearby states. The initial term of the companies’ collaboration is six years.

“Our partnership with AMRI is another example of how Lilly is transforming the way it conducts R&D, enabling our scientists to discover potential new medicines in as proficient a manner as possible,” says Alan D. Palkowitz, Lilly’s vice president for discovery, chemistry, research, and technologies.

No Lilly jobs will be affected by the deal, according to a Lilly spokeswoman. Instead, Lilly is consolidating and augmenting work that had been outsourced to other contract research firms. Having chemists on-site will simplify project management, maximize resources, and reduce overhead costs, she adds.

In the past two years, Lilly has set up many long-term outsourcing contracts, often involving its operations in Indiana. Covance provides clinical-trial support from Lilly’s former Greenfield location. Advion BioSciences built a new lab to house bioanalytical capabilities that Lilly transferred to it. Thermo Fisher Scientific has taken over Lilly’s in-house clinical-trial-materials manufacturing. And Evonik Industries supplies pharmaceutical ingredients from the Tippecanoe Laboratories site.

Altogether, these deals have kept about 1,000 former Lilly workers employed. The company has targeted 5,500 job cuts by the end of 2011.