Lilly Research Centre

The Lilly Research Centre is a medical research centre in Surrey. It is the European headquarters of Eli Lilly and Company.

Construction
Lilly received permission for the site in 1959. The site was built by McAlpine. The site was to open by August 1967, being 47 acres

From 1967 the catering was provided by the Bateman Catering Organisation

History
The former research site of Lilly was at Bromborough.

In 1968, when the centre opened, Eli Lilly was spending £20m on research in the UK. The average research cost of a new molecular entity is currently over £1bn. In 2003, a £40m investment transformed the site into a Centre of Excellence in Neuroscience Research.

Director of Research at the centre was Bill Dawson, a Fellow of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain.

In October 2019, Eli Lilly announced the closure of their Erl Wood research centre by the end of 2020 with some staff moving to other Eli Lilly locations in the local area and neuroscience research moving to the USA. A year later, in October 2020, UCB announced they had acquired the site from Lilly and would complete a refurbishment of the site.

Visits

 * It was featured in a two-part Panorama documentary on 10 and 17 January 1983, presented by Tom Mangold.
 * Prince Andrew, Duke of York visited the site on 11 June 2003.

Directors

 * David Dennen
 * John Wold 1983-
 * Paul Johnson 2002-2007
 * Karin Briner 2007-10

Operation
From 1967 the catering was provided by the Bateman Catering Organisation.

Research
The site had laboratory animals. A new £1.3m centre for Elanco Products opened in November 1978, with 12,500 sq ft. The site also researched plant science, where chemists developed pesticide formulation.

The pain killer benoxaprofen (known as Opren) was developed at the site in 1971, and launched on Tuesday 14 October 1980, and had been in hospitals since May 1980. It had to be rapidly withdrawn on 4 August 1982, as there were numerous side-effects, with maybe up to 61 deaths in the UK. It was banned by the government on 6 September 1982.

Structure
It is accessed via the A30 and B3020, and the A322 via junction 3 of the M3. The site has a 200-seat restaurant. The EMC building opened in 2000. The site is set in woodland.