For drug­mak­ers look­ing to ex­pand the sup­ply chain, re­al es­tate near some of the in­dus­try’s biggest hubs can be pro­hib­i­tive­ly ex­pen­sive. But fur­ther afield, big drug­mak­ers like Am­gen can find a bet­ter deal — and now cen­tral Ohio is set to wel­come a new neigh­bor to town.

Ar­leen Pauli­no

Am­gen will in­vest $365 mil­lion in­to a new man­u­fac­tur­ing plant in New Al­bany, OH, 18 miles north­east of Colum­bus, to fur­ther its as­sem­bly and pack­ag­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties for med­i­cines set to be dis­trib­uted in the US, the com­pa­ny said in a re­lease.

The site will en­com­pass 270,000 square feet, and Am­gen re­ceived sev­er­al tax breaks to open up shop in the up-and-com­ing New Al­bany In­ter­na­tion­al Busi­ness Park, in­clud­ing a 100% prop­er­ty tax abate­ment for 15 years.

The lo­ca­tion will al­low for a cen­tral lo­ca­tion for dis­tri­b­u­tion around the coun­try, SVP of man­u­fac­tur­ing Ar­leen Pauli­no said in a re­lease, and Ohio will of­fer both low op­er­at­ing costs and a grow­ing tal­ent pool. Am­gen cur­rent­ly has 25,000 em­ploy­ees across the world, 14,000 of which are based in the US.

Es­te­ban San­tos

“We are adding this ad­di­tion­al as­sem­bly and pack­ag­ing plant to our glob­al sup­ply chain net­work to sup­port the an­tic­i­pat­ed growth in de­mand for Am­gen med­i­cines,” Am­gen EVP of op­er­a­tions Es­te­ban San­tos said in a state­ment. “We plan to in­clude some of our most ad­vanced dig­i­tal au­toma­tion tech­nolo­gies in this new lo­ca­tion as we part­ner with the thriv­ing busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty of the Colum­bus re­gion to fur­ther ex­pand biotech­nol­o­gy re­gion­al­ly.”

VP of site op­er­a­tions San­dra Ro­driguez-Tole­do will move from Puer­to Ri­co to Ohio to over­see the new fa­cil­i­ty. One of its fea­tures is a heavy em­pha­sis on au­toma­tion, as it will fea­ture self-dri­ving ve­hi­cles to move ma­te­r­i­al from one place in the fa­cil­i­ty to an­oth­er and smart sen­sor to eval­u­ate the prod­ucts, as well us­ing da­ta-gath­er­ing tools to pre­dict quan­ti­ty and en­sure ef­fi­cien­cy.

“Our as­pi­ra­tion is to have the most ad­vanced as­sem­bly and pack­ing op­er­a­tion while we will cre­ate a fa­cil­i­ty that will lever­age the new tech­nol­o­gy that is in the mar­ket to be able to help ad­vance au­toma­tion,” Ro­driguez-Tole­do said in a call with End­points News.

The site is set to cre­ate 400 new jobs, and Am­gen has an agree­ment with Ohio State Uni­ver­si­ty, Pres­i­dent Kristi­na John­son said, to cre­ate an in­tern­ship pro­gram and oth­er ex­pe­ri­en­tial learn­ing chances.

The New Al­bany fa­cil­i­ty will sup­port Am­gen’s cur­rent en­vi­ron­men­tal stan­dards, as the com­pa­ny aims to be car­bon neu­tral by 2027. It will al­so sup­port the OneTen ini­tia­tive, which Am­gen is a part of along with com­pa­nies such as AT&T, Lowe’s and Gilead, to hire a mil­lion Black Amer­i­cans in­to well-pay­ing jobs by 2031.

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.