ChinaBio Today -- Eli Lilly (NYSE: LLY) won the prize for last week’s most innovative business plan. The company is transforming itself from a fully integrated big pharma to a partnership model, which it calls a Fully Integrated Pharmaceutical Network (FIPNet). The goal is to foster open collaboration between Lilly and global laboratory researchers. To implement that collaboration, Lilly unveiled a new program last week: the Phenotypic Drug Discovery Initiative, or PD2 (pronounced PD-squared) (see story). Lilly is offering a free-of-charge use to outside researchers of its disease-state assays, complete with a secure web portal, which will evaluate the therapeutic potential of externally-developed synthesized compounds. In return, Lilly will have an exclusive right to make the first bid on a partnership deal for any promising discoveries.
