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.

When Beth Hogan, a metastatic pancreatic cancer patient, showed up for her infusion at Yale’s Smilow Cancer Hospital in New Haven, CT on Oct. 11, she said she was informed that day that she would not be receiving Bristol Myers Squibb’s Abraxane, part of her combo treatment, because of a shortage.

“I was told we don’t know when you can have it,” she told Endpoints News via email, adding that she doesn’t expect to receive any Abraxane this coming Monday at her treatment appointment either, and she doesn’t know when things will change.

Production problems at a Novavax facility in Maryland have led to delays in the Covax vaccine sharing program. Now, a shortage of 1 billion doses is expected, as the supplier tries to navigate producing a shot up to regulators’ standards, Politico reported Tuesday.

The company has run into trouble with the purity of the vaccine. Novavax has had trouble proving it can produce a shot consistently up to standards, and it has caused significant delays in the rollout to low- and middle-income countries. This follows several delays at Novavax that has put the executive crew on the defensive.

United Therapeutics said Monday that it received a complete response letter for its potential pulmonary arterial hypertension drug Tyvaso DPI, due to an issue with a third-party facility that performs drug substance testing. The company said it expects an approval will come by next summer.

The inspection issue appears to be the only problem the FDA took notice of, according to United. There were no issues with packaging, manufacturing or testing Tyvaso DPI at the MannKind Corporation facility, the company said.

A Merck antibiotic has been recalled after reports of the presence of glass particulate matter, the company announced Tuesday.

One lot of Cubicin will be recalled, which includes about 22,000 vials of the 500mg dose of the intravenously administered drug.

The recall comes after a piece of glass was found in a vial, raising safety concerns.

“Our highest priorities are the health and safety of patients and the quality of our medicines and vaccines,” said Richard Haupt, the VP of vaccines & infectious diseases. “We sincerely regret any inconvenience caused by this recall.”