Eli Lilly

Eli Lilly & Company-a Pharmaceutical Giant with a History of Firsts

Established in Indianapolis in 1876, Eli Lilly and Company is named for its founder, Colonel Eli Lilly, a pharmaceutical chemist and veteran of the Civil War. Traded as LLY on the NYSE, the drug giant is the result of Colonel Lilly's belief that many of the pharmaceuticals available at the time were of inferior and/or inconsistent quality, and as a result, the chemist decided to address this issue through novel concepts such as:

Stringent quality controls that were unique to the era-Lilly developed a system of drug manufacturing procedures that ensured the premium and consistent quality of its products.
Preparing pharmaceutical compounds that would only be available through the direct suggestion of a physician. Many of the popular drugs and elixirs of the time were promoted and sold by con men.
The development and manufacture of drugs based wholly on the latest scientific knowledge-many of the pharmaceuticals of the time were inspired by unproven folklore and/or superstitions.

Today, Eli Lilly is one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies, marketing products manufactured in 13 different countries to consumers around the globe. Employing nearly 40,000 people worldwide, Lilly has a long history of pharmaceutical firsts, some of which include:

The 1923 development of the analogue Lletin, the world's first commercially available insulin product for the treatment of diabetes.
In the 1940's, Lilly had been one of the first pharmaceutical companies to develop a method to mass produce the wonder drug penicillin, an antibiotic still in wide usage today. Other effective antibiotics that came from Lilly laboratories include vancomycin and erythromycin.
Through the 60s and 70s, Lilly developed new generations of antibiotics that could be delivered either through injection or orally-these drugs included Keflex, Kefzol, and Ceclor; today, Ceclor is the world's most widely used oral antibiotic. During this same period, Lilly also developed the potent cancer-fighting drugs, vinblastine and vincristine.
In 1982, the world's first pharmaceutical drug based on recombinant DNA technology had been developed by Lilly-Humulin was hailed as an important advance in the treatment of diabetes because it was the first synthetic analogue that was identical to human produced insulin.
By the year 2000, Lilly had been responsible for the development of a wide variety of novel pharmaceuticals that were effective in fighting diseases such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorders, osteoporosis, pancreatic and other forms of cancer, which included the development of Alimta, a drug used for the treatment of malignant pleural mesothelioma.

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