The Antibody Underdog

Regeneron made headlines. But Eli Lilly bets its Covid drug can help more patients faster

- James E. Ellis, Robert Langreth and Riley Griffin, with Anna Edney

In April, Eli Lilly & Co. Chief Executive Officer David Ricks made a radical decision. He told U.S. regulators the drug giant would halt production of a colon cancer medicine at a New Jersey plant in order to start making a coronavirus antibody treatment that hadn’t even moved into human testing. “We had no evidence it would work,” Ricks recalls. “It now sounds slightly crazy, but in the middle of the pandemic, it seemed like the right thing to do.”

It was an expensive risk. Or as Ricks puts it, just the kind of “unusual maneuver” necessary to bring patients a treatment when they need it most: before a vaccine becomes widely available (page 42). Any day, Lilly could find out whether the bet has paid off.

Both Lilly and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. have sought U.S. emergency authorization for their antibody-based treatments for Covid-19 on the strength of promising preliminary trial results. They’ve become some of the highest-profile experimental therapies since a Covid-stricken President Trump received Regeneron’s in October. “I want everybody to be given the same treatment as your president,” he said on Twitter just days after leaving the hospital. “The drug companies have just made a lot of it!” Trump said, citing Regeneron and Lilly. “You’re going to get it fast, just like I did.”