INDIANAPOLIS – BioCrossroads, the initiative of the Central Indiana Corporate Partnership focused on promoting Indiana’s life sciences sector, is hosting its annual Life Sciences Summit on Thursday.
The event, being held at the recently opened Elanco Animal Health global headquarters in downtown Indianapolis, brings together more than 250 leaders to discuss “the most pressing challenges and emerging opportunities” in the life sciences industry.
The theme of this year’s summit is “One Health: Indiana’s Blueprint for Global Leadership,” which is a reference to the One Health Innovation District, an emerging industry hub being developed by Elanco, Purdue University and the Indiana Economic Development Corp.
The new Elanco headquarters building is the first part of the burgeoning district, plans for which also include a shared-use facility for the three partners.
BioCrossroads CEO Vince Wong says the goal of this year’s theme was to bring some definition to “One Health.”
“That term has been around for many years, and we wanted to utilize the summit as a platform to begin to fill in the blank around, ‘What does One Health mean? Why is it important? And what is Indiana’s unique opportunity to contribute to One Health-related opportunities and challenges?’” Wong said.
The summit will feature a panel discussion around One Health that will include Elanco CEO Jeff Simmons, Purdue President Mung Chiang, Eli Lilly and Co. CEO Dave Ricks, Corteva Agriscience CEO Chuck Magro, and Indiana University President Pamela Whitten.
When plans for the One Health Innovation District were announced in May 2024, officials said the district would be dedicated to “optimizing the health of people, animals, plants and the planet.”
Wong told Inside INdiana Business Host Gerry Dick that Indiana is in a prime spot to focus on technologies that cover people, animals and plants.
“Indiana really has an opportunity, given the fact that we’ve got Lilly, Elanco and Corteva all headquartered here with really incredible research universities, to advance a lot of those technologies that transcend those different domains,” Wong said.
He added that Indiana is also well positioned to help address many of the challenges that also have a relationship among the three domains.
“You think about antimicrobial stewardship or the importance of food into human health, those are some of the biggest challenges that we face as a society,” he said. “And again, given the composition of all the different industry leaders and university researchers we have here, we are uniquely positioned to make meaningful contributions in those specific areas.”
Wong said he believes the One Health Innovation District can be an anchor of an even larger ecosystem, and the summit is an example of trying to facilitate the kind of collaboration that BioCrossroads hopes to foster.
Our partners at the IBJ will have more from Thursday’s panel discussion, and Elanco CEO Jeff Simmons will be a guest on this weekend’s edition of Inside INdiana Business with Gerry Dick to talk more about the summit and the One Health district.
