WEST LAFAYETTE — Eli Lilly and Co. will give Purdue University up to $52 million over five years as part of a new research endeavor between the two institutions, marking Purdue’s largest collaboration with a single company.
The groups will initially focus their research on improving the delivery of injectable pain medicines and developing ways to reduce risks associated with investing in drug development and more effectively predict the outcome of new therapies in humans.
"The biomedical revolution is upon us, but harnessing its full potential will require strong collaboration between academic research centers and industry partners," said David Ricks, Lilly’s chairman, president and CEO, in a news release.
Purdue researchers from the natural and physical sciences, engineering and veterinary medicine will contribute to the collaboration with Lilly researchers.
The institutions have a long history of working with one another on a project-to-project basis, but this agreement is much larger in scale and is designed in such a way that the two research groups will be "joined at the hip," said Suresh Garimella, Purdue's vice president for research and partnerships.
"We're really building a new path here with building very strong and organic, deep relationships that are supported at the highest levels, but also have a lot of people on both sides who are deeply engaged," he said.
The partnership is the most recent in a series of comprehensive collaborations between the university and private companies. In May, Purdue and Microsoft Corp. announced a long-term agreement to build a quantum computer. In 2016, Rolls-Royce Corp. and Purdue unveiled a plan to combine resources for a $33 million jet-engine research and development program.