As Ire­land con­tin­ues to see more in­vest­ments and build­ing projects from phar­ma com­pa­nies, an­oth­er con­tender is look­ing to place more in­vest­ment in the Emer­ald Isle.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­port from The Irish Times on Fri­day, Ab­bott Lab­o­ra­to­ries is in­vest­ing €440 mil­lion, or about $451 mil­lion, to build a new man­u­fac­tur­ing plant in Kilken­ny, lo­cat­ed in the coun­try’s south­east, to make more of its glu­cose mon­i­tors.

Ac­cord­ing to an Ab­bott spokesper­son in an email to End­points News, the com­pa­ny an­tic­i­pates that more than 800 peo­ple will be em­ployed at the Kilken­ny fa­cil­i­ty once it opens, and the re­main­der will be em­ployed at its site in Done­gal.

“Done­gal is a key man­u­fac­tur­ing site for Ab­bott’s di­a­betes care busi­ness, and we have in­vest­ed heav­i­ly in ex­pand­ing our op­er­a­tions there over the last four years. We’re in­creas­ing our cap­i­tal in­vest­ment in Done­gal in­clud­ing fa­cil­i­ties, pro­duc­tion equip­ment and adding peo­ple to en­able Done­gal to bet­ter sup­port our prod­ucts glob­al­ly,” the Ab­bott spokesper­son said.

For the new 250,000 square-foot build­ing in Kilken­ny, the com­pa­ny will start re­cruit­ment im­me­di­ate­ly for po­si­tions in en­gi­neer­ing, qual­i­ty con­trol and med­ical de­vice man­u­fac­tur­ing, among oth­ers. The site, which the com­pa­ny hopes to have on­line by 2024, will be re­spon­si­ble for the man­u­fac­ture of its Freestyle Li­bre 3 sys­tem for con­tin­u­ous glu­cose mon­i­tor­ing. And the com­pa­ny is bull­ish that it can find the tal­ent.

“The new lo­ca­tion of Kilken­ny is at­trac­tive to our fu­ture em­ploy­ees as the re­gion has strong ed­u­ca­tion­al links with the South-East Tech­no­log­i­cal Uni­ver­si­ty, en­abling us to at­tract grad­u­ates from its Wa­ter­ford and Car­low cam­pus­es,” the spokesper­son said.

Ab­bot has had a heavy pres­ence in Ire­land for over 75 years and cur­rent­ly em­ploys more than 5,000 peo­ple across nine sites. How­ev­er, Ab­bott’s fur­ther com­mit­ment comes at a time when sev­er­al oth­er ma­jor phar­mas are look­ing to snap up Irish soil for man­u­fac­tur­ing.

Mer­ck KGaA, Alex­ion, Eli Lil­ly and SK have all an­nounced ei­ther new ma­jor mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar sites or ex­pan­sion projects across the coun­try this year, and the news from Ab­bott shows that the speed of man­u­fac­tur­ing de­vel­op­ment isn’t slow­ing down.

The CDMO arm of one of South Korea’s largest conglomerates has posted its year-end results and plans for 2023, which include new construction.

Samsung Biologics netted north of KRW 3 trillion ($2.4 billion) in 2022 revenue and an operating profit of KRW 983.6 billion ($799 million), which the company touted on Friday as “record-high earnings.” The revenue boost was 55% compared to 2021.

Eli Lilly has succeeded in its attempt to get the first non-covalent version of Bruton’s tyrosine kinase, or BTK, inhibitors to market, pushing it past rival Merck.

The FDA gave an accelerated nod to Lilly’s daily oral med, to be sold as Jaypirca, for patients with relapsed or refractory mantle cell lymphoma.

The agency’s green light, disclosed by the Indianapolis Big Pharma on Friday afternoon, catapults Lilly into a field dominated by covalent BTK inhibitors, which includes AbbVie and Johnson & Johnson’s Imbruvica, AstraZeneca’s Calquence and BeiGene’s Brukinsa.

The FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) voted unanimously in favor of “harmonizing” Covid vaccine compositions, meaning all current vaccine recipients would receive a bivalent vaccine, regardless of whether they’ve gotten their primary series.

The vote marks an effort to clear up confusion around varying formulations and dosing schedules for current primary series and booster vaccines, as well as “get closer to the strains that are circulating,” according to committee member Paul Offit, professor of pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Novartis’ sickle cell drug, approved in 2019 and branded as Adakveo, has failed an ongoing Phase III, according to preliminary results.

The Swiss pharma giant unveiled early data from the ongoing STAND Phase III study on Friday, saying that crizanlizumab showed no statistically significant difference between the drug at two different dose levels compared to placebo in annualized rates of vaso-occlusive crises that lead to a healthcare visit over the first year since being randomized into the trial.