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Edited by
James E. EllisBloomberg Businessweek November 2, 2020● Regeneron made headlines.
But Eli Lilly bets its Covid drug
can help more patients fasterthe kind of “unusual maneuver” necessary to bring
patients a treatment when they need it most: before
a vaccinebecomeswidelyavailable(page42).Any
day,Lillycouldfindoutwhetherthebethaspaidoff.
BothLillyandRegeneronPharmaceuticalsInc.
havesoughtU.S.emergency authorizationfor
theirantibody-basedtreatmentsforCovid-19on
thestrengthofpromisingpreliminarytrialresults.
They’vebecomesomeofthehighest-profile exper-
imental 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.”In April, Eli Lilly & Co. Chief Executive Officer
David Ricks made a radical decision. He told U.S.
regulatorsthedruggiantwouldhaltproductionof
a coloncancermedicineata NewJerseyplantin
ordertostartmakinga coronavirus antibody treat-
ment 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