While Eli Lilly is rethinking its biotech incubator plans in Europe, the Big Pharma has gone ahead and opened its San Diego site.
The Gateway Labs are co-working spaces for researchers that also act like accelerators. The idea is that companies or researchers that lease space have the opportunity to collaborate on mutually beneficial research and tap into Lilly’s expertise.
The San Diego site, which opened Friday, is located at One Alexandria Square Megacampus in Torrey Pines. It encompasses 82,514 square feet of laboratory and office space, which Lilly expects to house up to 15 life sciences companies and more than 250 of their employees.
“Several” early-stage biotechs have already signed up for the San Diego site, according to Lilly.
“At Lilly, we are committed to meeting the biotech ecosystem on its own terms, supporting companies at every stage and evolving alongside them,” Lilly Chief Scientific Officer Daniel Skovronsky, M.D., Ph.D., said in a Sept. 26 release.
“The future of medicine depends on combining the strengths of academia, biotech and large pharma to solve some of the most difficult diseases facing patients,” Skovronsky added. “Our expanded presence here enables us to further connect with San Diego's vibrant startup community, world-leading scientists, and research institutions.”
As well as the San Diego site, Lilly already runs two Gateway Labs in South San Francisco as well as one site in Boston. The pharma’s first international outpost was a Gateway Labs in Beijing, which was set up last year.
Speaking to Fierce Biotech back in April 2024, Gateway Labs’ global head Julie Gilmore, Ph.D., said Lilly was “really excited to expand this model.”
Gateway Labs-based companies have raised more than $2 billion in capital, which has supported the ongoing development of more than 50 therapeutics and platforms, Lilly pointed out in this morning’s release.
Plans were also underway to launch a Gateway Labs site in the U.K. as the first European site for the program, but this development is now up in the air while Lilly considers the implications of drug price negotiations with the U.K. government.