New chief executive officer at Lilly stresses drug development

INDIANAPOLIS John Lechleiter, a Harvard-trained chemist, has been named Eli Lilly’s chief executive officer beginning on April 1, according to published reports. He will be succeeding Sidney Taurel who has announced his retirement from the Fortune 500 company.

Lechleiter will be the ninth leader in the company’s 131 years, and make a salary of $1.4 million, with a possible bonus of $2 million depending on the company’s performance, according to published reports.

A new leader seems to be a positive change for the company as its best-selling drug Zyprexa, an anti-psychotic, will lose its patent protection in three years, and its other top-selling drugs Cymbalta, Gemzar and Humalong, will expire two years after, further increasing the company’s pressure to introduce new products to the market.

According to the new chief executive officer, the introduction of new drugs will be his main priority, and is optimistic in this development. “As many challenges as we have in this industry today, it’s also a time of tremendous opportunity when you look at how much more we know about the human biology that underlies the mechanisms of disease,” said Lechleiter.