October 8, 2020 -- Eli Lilly and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have launched an initiative to supply low- and middle-income countries with COVID-19 therapeutic antibody treatment.
The initiative will be conducted under the auspices of the COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator, which was established by the Gates Foundation, Wellcome, and Mastercard to hasten development of therapies for the disease.
Commercial manufacturing of Lilly's COVID-19 antibody therapy will begin in April 2021 at the Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies facility in Denmark. Regulatory authorization for the treatment is pending, the company said; if it is received before April, Lilly will begin distributing the treatment to lower-income countries.
Lilly's collaborators -- AbCellera Biologics, Shanghai Junshi Biosciences, and Columbia University -- will waive royalties as part of this initiative, according to the firm.