UPDATE 1-RESEARCH ALERT-JP Morgan cuts Eli Lilly to underweight

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Sept 16 (Reuters) - J.P. Morgan Securities downgraded drugmaker Eli Lilly and Co (LLY.N) to "underweight" from "neutral," and said the company faces the loss of patent protection on $7.5 billion in product sales by 2013.

"This trend only gets worse over time with the 2014 expiration of Cymbalta," analyst Chris Schott said in a note to clients.

Cymbalta is Eli Lilly's antidepressant that in June won approval for addressing pain condition fibromyalgia.

"Lilly's pipeline remains modest, consisting of a number of assets with either significant regulatory or clinical risk that are unlikely to drive the shares over the next 12 months," Schott said.

Schott expects a delay of one year related to the company's new blood-clot preventer Effient. Effient, which is waiting for approval from U.S. regulators, has been widely touted as a medicine that could supplant Bristol-Myers Squibb Co's (BMY.N) $5 billion-a-year Plavix as the standard treatment to prevent heart attacks among heart patients, including those receiving stents.

Some analysts believe that because of Effient's potency it will be approved as soon as Sept, 26, while others predict U.S. regulators will demand another time-consuming safety trial because of an unfavorable bleeding trend and risk to three subgroups of patients in a study.

J.P. Morgan's Schott does not believe Effient is enough to offset upcoming patent expirations, regardless of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) decision on the drug.

Shares of Eli Lilly were trading down almost 2 percent at $45.27 early Tuesday morning on the New York Stock Exchange. (Reporting by Vidya L Nathan in Bangalore; Editing by Pratish Narayanan)