Lilly CEO Urges Policy Prescriptions to Help Ensure Public and Private Biotech Investments Generate Dividends and U.S. ...( BOSTON April 30 /- Today John C. ...)

BOSTON, April 30 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Today John C. Lechleiter, Ph.D., president and CEO of Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE: LLY), provided insight into the future of life sciences and a roadmap for ensuring that key players' significant investments in the sector are rewarded. He made his remarks to the Massachusetts Biz/Bio Conference, a gathering of policymakers, business leaders and academics, under the theme "Economic Prosperity through Scientific Discovery." He suggested that the Boston area provides a template for other communities across America, citing reports from Northeastern University that show that Massachusetts has enjoyed a 10 percent rise in the number of biopharmaceutical jobs while there has been a 25 percent decline in overall manufacturing jobs in the first half of the decade. But those gains and others rely on public policies that support growth in the life sciences, he said.

"Massachusetts really stands out for the approach that you've taken to developing the life-sciences sector," said Lechleiter - a sector he said is in "a Golden Age of discovery." He continued: "I believe that we [in the U.S.] are being challenged as never before, to make urgent and unprecedented policy decisions about a very wide range of issues that will determine not just the location, but also the speed, quality, and course of innovation in the life sciences. Government and public policy will be the focus of much of this decision-making."

Among the range of public policies that bear on whether and how biotech investments pay off, the intellectual property protections the government affords new medications ranks among the top of the list, he said. Intellectual property protections for a class of medications called "biologics," is
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