Eli Lilly and Company and Amgen have announced a global antibody manufacturing collaboration to significantly increase the supply capacity available for Lilly's potential COVID-19 therapies.

Lilly is currently studying several potential neutralizing antibodies for the prevention and/or treatment of COVID-19 as either monotherapy or in combination.

Through this collaboration, the two companies will have the ability to quickly scale up production and serve many more patients around the world should one or more of Lilly's antibody therapies prove successful in clinical testing and receive regulatory approval.

"Based on our initial clinical studies, we believe that virus neutralizing antibodies, including LY-CoV-555, could play an important role in the fight against COVID-19," said Daniel Skovronsky, M.D., Ph.D., Lilly's chief scientific officer and president of Lilly Research Laboratories. "Increasing the manufacturing capacity for our neutralizing antibodies through this collaboration with Amgen is a crucial next step, and together we hope to be able to produce many millions of doses even next year."