Last April, when Ace­to ac­quired Biore­agent, CEO Gilles Cot­ti­er wasn’t able to greet any of his new col­leagues in per­son. But Tues­day, 18 months and four ac­qui­si­tions lat­er, he was in Ire­land, meet­ing mem­bers of the A&C Bio Buffer, just as his com­pa­ny an­nounced it bought out the CMO.

Gilles Cot­ti­er

The New York-based man­u­fac­tur­er ac­quired A&C Bio Buffer to help boost its Covid-19 re­lief ef­forts and ex­pand its wingspan with­in man­u­fac­tur­ing, the com­pa­ny an­nounced Tues­day.

A&C man­u­fac­tures bi­o­log­i­cal buffers — which are an or­gan­ic sub­stance that main­tains a con­stant pH lev­el — process and clean­ing so­lu­tions, and wa­ter for in­jec­tion at its Lim­er­ick, Ire­land site. It’s the sixth ac­qui­si­tion Ace­to has made in the past 2 years. The move comes just months af­ter Ace­to picked up A&C group, which A&C Bio Buffer was for­mer­ly a part of. And though Cot­ti­er is not ready to dis­close just what the com­pa­ny’s next moves are, it isn’t done with merg­ers and ac­qui­si­tions just yet.

Fi­nan­cial terms of the deal were not dis­closed.

“We are proud of A&C Bio Buffer’s out­stand­ing rep­u­ta­tion for qual­i­ty and cus­tomer ser­vice, and its emer­gence as a lead­ing spe­cial­ty man­u­fac­tur­er of GMP cus­tom buffers and chem­i­cal blend prod­ucts for the bio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­dus­try,” A&C CEO John God­frey said in a press re­lease. “We are de­light­ed that our unique ca­pa­bil­i­ties, Eu­ro­pean foot­print and cus­tom prod­ucts are be­ing in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to Acute, as we con­tin­ue our evo­lu­tion as a dy­nam­ic new so­lu­tions provider to the glob­al phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal sec­tor.”

The com­pa­ny has been grow­ing quick­ly, while play­ing a key role in sup­ply­ing raw ma­te­ri­als for the Covid-19 vac­cines.

In June, Ace­to an­nounced that it ac­quired Cas­cade Chem­istry, a Eu­gene, Ore­gon-based CD­MO that makes ac­tive phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­gre­di­ents. In May, Ace­to ac­quired Fi­nar Lim­it­ed, a New York dis­trib­u­tor, and Biore­agent in April. In De­cem­ber 2020 it took on IsleChem and its con­tract R&D an­a­lyt­i­cal ser­vices. The ac­qui­si­tions add to its al­ready-es­tab­lished man­u­fac­tur­ing op­er­a­tions in Chi­na, In­dia and Eu­rope, in ad­di­tion to North Amer­i­ca.

While that growth will not go on for­ev­er, it is cer­tain­ly here now, and Ace­to has set it­self up to be a key play­er in vac­ci­na­tion ef­forts.

“Each of these dif­fer­ent com­pa­nies is a dif­fer­ent build­ing block, some are more small mol­e­cule ori­ent­ed,” Cot­ti­er said in an in­ter­view with End­points News. “A&C is re­al­ly a crit­i­cal part for up­stream and down­stream for the bio­phar­ma in­dus­try. “

Fenlai Tan still gets chills thinking about the darkest day of his life.

Three out of eight lung cancer patients who received a tyrosine kinase inhibitor developed by his company, Betta Pharma, died in the span of a month. Tan, the chief medical officer, was summoned to Peking Union Medical College Hospital, where the head of the clinical trial department told him that the trial investigators would be conducting an autopsy to see if the patients had died of the disease — they were all very sick by the time they enrolled — or of interstitial lung disease, a deadly side effect tied to the TKI class that’s been reported in Japan.

BioNTech’s first mRNA-based vaccine site in Africa will call Rwanda home, and construction is set to start in mid-2022, the company announced Tuesday at a public health forum.

The German company signed a memorandum of understanding, after a meeting between Rwanda’s Minister of Health, Daniel Ngamije, Senegal’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Aïssata Tall Sall, and senior BioNTech officials. Construction plans have been finalized, and assets have been ordered. The agreement will help bring end-to-end manufacturing to Africa, and as many as several hundred million doses of vaccines per year, though initial production will be more modest.

With Merck and Bristol Myers Squibb still dominating the PD-(L)1 space and the threat of lower-cost options coming from behind, is there still room for GlaxoSmithKline’s checkpoint inhibitor — the seventh to market — to make billions? For Sagard Healthcare Royalty Partners, the answer is yes.

Sagard has plumped down $250 million in cash to buy out the 8% royalty AnaptysBio owns on Jemperli sales below $1 billion.