Eli Lilly will invest $450 million into its Research Triangle Park facility in North Carolina to boost manufacturing for its diabetes products, the company announced Tuesday.

Following recent shortages in its diabetes drugs, Trulicity and Mounjaro, the pharma giant said the move is meant to increase capacity for parenteral filling, device assembly and packaging for those products.

“As we move into 2023, Lilly is focused on finding innovative solutions to meet the growing demand for our medicines,” Edgardo Hernandez, EVP and president of Lilly Manufacturing Operations, said in a statement.

Hernandez added that the company is on track to reach its goal of doubling its incretin capacity by the end of 2023. Incretins are hormones that trigger drops in blood glucose levels and are used in diabetes drugs. 

“[T]his investment is key to ensuring even more patients will have access to medicines they need in the future,” Hernandez said.

The investment will add 100 new jobs to the facility, including manufacturing staff. The decision also builds upon Eli Lilly’ previous $4 billion funding into its North Carolina facilities. Some $1.7 billion of that went into the Research Triangle Park facility.

Additionally, the move is the latest in a series of pushes among pharma companies to increase the production of diabetes drugs as demand skyrockets. In late 2022, the Food and Drug Administration announced that Mounjaro and Trulicity were in short supply.

Mounjaro was FDA-approved in May 2022 as an injectable treatment for diabetes. Trulicity is considered Eli Lilly’s best-selling drug, bringing in $5.5 billion through the first nine months of 2022.

Novo Nordisk has also faced heightened demand for its new diabetes drugs, Ozempic and Wegovy. Due to increased hype around the drugs on social media — particularly among celebrities — more and more people are seeking to get the drug for off-label use to treat obesity and help spur weight loss.

In January, the FDA approved Novo Nordisk’s Rybelsus for first-line treatment for type 2 diabetes. Before the latest approval, the drug could only be prescribed after patients had tried other therapies.

Eli Lilly noted in its announcement that it plans to introduce several new medicines in 2023 — focusing on areas including diabetes, obesity, Alzheimer’s and cancer — and the boost in manufacturing will help the company do so.

Looking ahead, Eli Lilly is slated to release its Q4 2022 earnings report Thursday, February 2 before the markets open.