Af­ter years of short­ages, Mer­ck an­nounces plans for a new fac­to­ry for an old life­sav­ing drug

Four years af­ter Sanofi left them as a pop­u­lar blad­der can­cer drug’s on­ly pro­duc­er, Mer­ck is in­vest­ing in a new fa­cil­i­ty that could help ame­lio­rate the wide­spread short­ages that pa­tients, doc­tors and man­u­fac­tur­ers have faced for near­ly a decade.

Mer­ck said they will build a new plant at their Durham, NC vac­cine man­u­fac­tur­ing cen­ter to pro­duce BCG, an im­munother­a­py that has been used for decades to treat blad­der can­cer. The fa­cil­i­ty won’t be an im­me­di­ate so­lu­tion — Mer­ck said it will take 5 to 6 years to con­struct and even then, the batch­es will on­ly grow grad­u­al­ly — but the com­pa­ny, one of the world’s largest pro­duc­ers of vac­cines, said it will even­tu­al­ly triple their cur­rent pro­duc­tion and meet de­mand.

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