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.

With just days before President Joe Biden’s Covid-19 booster rollout is set to go into effect, an FDA advisory committee appeared on the verge of not recommending boosters for anyone in the US before a last-minute change of wording laid the groundwork for older adults to have access to a third dose.

The FDA’s adcomm on Vaccines and Related Biological Products (VRBPAC) roundly rejected Pfizer/BioNTech booster shots for all individuals older than 16 by a 16-2 vote Friday afternoon. Soon after, however, the agency posed committee members a new question limiting booster use to the 65-and-older population and individuals at high risk of disease due to occupational exposure or comorbidities.

This year’s ESMO Congress has had a major focus on Big Pharma drugs — most notably candidates from Merck and AstraZeneca — but there have also been updates from smaller biotechs with data looking to challenge the big-name drugmakers.

Today, we’re highlighting some of the data releases that flew under the radar at #ESMO21 — whether from early-stage drugs looking to make a mark or older stalwarts with interesting follow-up data.

In recent months, the battle for PD-(L)1 dominance has spilled over into early cancer with Merck’s Keytruda and Bristol Myers Squibb’s Opdivo all alone on the front lines. Keytruda now has another shell in its bandolier, and it could spell a quick approval.

Keytruda cut the risk of relapse or death by 35% over placebo (p=0.00658) in high-risk, stage 2 melanoma patients who had previously undergone surgery to remove their tumors, according to full data from the Phase III KEYNOTE-716 presented Saturday at #ESMO21.

Merck has worked hard to bring its I/O blockbuster Keytruda into earlier and earlier lines of therapy, and now the wonder drug appears poised to make a quick entry into early advanced cervical cancer.

A combination of Keytruda and chemotherapy with or without Roche’s Avastin cut the risk of death by 33% over chemo with or without Avastin (p=<0.001) in first-line patients with persistent, recurrent or metastatic cervical cancer, according to full data from the Phase III KEYNOTE-826 study presented Saturday at #ESMO21.