What can $1 bil­lion buy? If you’re Am­gen, it’s good for two man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ties in the US.

The Cal­i­for­nia-based drug gi­ant will in­vest close to $550 mil­lion in a drug sub­stance plant in Hol­ly Springs, NC, adding it­self to an ever-grow­ing list of biotech com­pa­nies that have de­cid­ed to call North Car­oli­na home, and mark­ing its sec­ond drug man­u­fac­tur­ing an­nounce­ment in a lit­tle more than a month.

Am­gen pre­vi­ous­ly an­nounced an ex­pan­sion in Ohio, along with an agree­ment with Ohio State Uni­ver­si­ty to cre­ate an ex­pe­ri­en­tial learn­ing pro­gram, to­ward the end of June. But the news of its Hol­ly Springs, NC in­vest­ment snuck in­to its Q2 earn­ings re­port Tues­day.

“In an­tic­i­pa­tion of fu­ture de­mand for our med­i­cines, we will in­vest ap­prox­i­mate­ly $1 bil­lion to build two new man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ties – a pack­ag­ing plant in Ohio and a drug sub­stance plant in North Car­oli­na,” the re­lease said. “Both of these fa­cil­i­ties will be built faster and at a low­er cost than tra­di­tion­al plants, and both al­so will uti­lize cut­ting-edge tech­nolo­gies to be more ef­fi­cient and en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly than tra­di­tion­al plants.”

Am­gen did not re­spond to a re­quest for com­ment Wednes­day.

The North Car­oli­na fa­cil­i­ty will cre­ate more than 350 jobs and is set to be op­er­a­tional by 2025, the com­pa­ny said. Con­struc­tion will start in 2021 and be com­plet­ed by 2029, and new hires will in­clude en­gi­neers, tech­ni­cians, qual­i­ty, man­age­ment and ad­min­is­tra­tive roles.

In­cen­tives in­clude a job de­vel­op­ment grant from the state worth around $12.6 mil­lion, and an­oth­er $22.8 mil­lion in in­cen­tives from Wake Coun­ty and the Hol­ly Springs lo­cal gov­ern­ment. The grants are con­tin­gent up­on hir­ing and in­vest­ment mile­stones. The av­er­age salary of the new po­si­tions added is ex­pect­ed to reach near­ly $120,000, close to dou­ble what the cur­rent av­er­age is in Wake Coun­ty.

“World-class com­pa­nies like Am­gen are very se­lec­tive when they eval­u­ate busi­ness lo­ca­tions and they on­ly choose places that pro­vide the best sup­port for their op­er­a­tions,” Gov. Roy Coop­er said in a press re­lease. “To­day’s de­ci­sion proves once again that North Car­oli­na re­mains a pre­mier lo­ca­tion for the most in­no­v­a­tive biotech com­pa­nies in the in­dus­try.”

Fu­ji­film Diosynth joined the ex­pan­sion par­ty in Hol­ly Springs in March with the an­nounce­ment of a $2 bil­lion plant of its own. A month ear­li­er, Gilead opened an of­fice for fi­nance, IT and hu­man re­sources op­er­a­tions in the area.

Am­gen’s ex­pan­sion marks the 47th life sci­ences project to come to North Car­oli­na since 2017, Coop­er said in an event.

San­dra Ro­driguez-Tole­do

“Cam­bridge and Boston bet­ter look out be­cause North Car­oli­na is com­ing,” Coop­er said.

Robert Keny­on, Am­gen’s VP of man­u­fac­tur­ing, will be the site lead for the new fa­cil­i­ty. He told the N&O that Am­gen will be the first ten­ant in the Friend­ship In­no­va­tion Park and that the site will have sin­gle-use tech­nol­o­gy, which pro­vides flex­i­bil­i­ty to man­u­fac­ture dif­fer­ent drugs.

“We are ex­cit­ed to be mak­ing this in­vest­ment in Hol­ly Springs and be­com­ing an im­por­tant part of the com­mu­ni­ty,” Keny­on said in a re­lease. “Be­yond be­ing a vi­brant busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment, the area of­fers a skilled, trained, and di­verse tal­ent pool that we know will help Am­gen main­tain its long his­to­ry of serv­ing pa­tients.”

Am­gen is al­so in­vest­ing $365 mil­lion in­to a new man­u­fac­tur­ing plant in New Al­bany, OH, 18 miles north­east of Colum­bus, to fur­ther its as­sem­bly and pack­ag­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties. That site will be 270,000 square feet, and be housed in the New Al­bany In­ter­na­tion­al Busi­ness Park. VP of site op­er­a­tions San­dra Ro­driguez-Tole­do will move from Puer­to Ri­co to Ohio to over­see the new fa­cil­i­ty.

As a self-stylized drug pricing disruptor, EQRx has high hopes for its lead PD-(L)1 to offer proof of concept for the entire business model. After touting a win back in May, the biotech is back with full data in lung cancer that could back up an approval.

Patients dosed with EQRx and CStone Pharmaceuticals’ sugemalimab posted median progression-free survival of 9 months compared with 5.8 months for patients given placebo (p=0.0026), according to full data from the Phase III GEMSTONE-301 study in Stage III non-small cell lung cancer set to be presented at this weekend’s #ESMO21.

Facing the big dogs in the PD-(L)1 space, AstraZeneca has taken its own contender Imfinzi into blockbuster territory in its four years on the market but sees even bigger things for the drug. Combinations could be the key, and early results from a mid-stage test are adding some fuel to that strategy.

Imfinzi combined with one of two investigational immunotherapies — a CD73 antibody dubbed oleclumab or an Innate’s anti-NGK2a named monalizumab — topped Imfinzi alone in terms of overall response and progression-free survival in patients with stage III non-small cell lung cancer whose tumors had not worsened during concurrent chemoradiation, according to interim data from the Phase II COAST trial set to be presented at #ESMO21.

One Spanish biotech is beefing up its plasma therapy operations, and on Friday, it announced that it’s doing so in a billion-dollar deal.

Grifols is now the largest shareholder of Biotest, a company valued at more than $1.8 billion. By teaming up, the two will try to increase the number of plasma therapies available and increase patient access around the world, Grifols said in a press release.

The company did so by acquiring holding company Tiancheng Pharmaceutical, the Germany-based owner of nearly 90% of Biotest shares, for nearly $1.27 billion. Grifols now owns nearly 90% of Biotest voting rights and almost 45% of the total share capital of Biotest.