A plant lo­cat­ed in Wrex­ham, Wales that is pack­ing the Ox­ford/As­traZeneca Covid-19 vac­cine in­to vials was sur­round­ed by a bomb squad af­ter of­fi­cials called po­lice to re­port a sus­pi­cious pack­age.

The alert caused a par­tial evac­u­a­tion of the plant, the BBC was among those to re­port Wednes­day. The own­er of the plant, British drug­mak­er Wock­hardt UK, said it was co­op­er­at­ing with lo­cal au­thor­i­ties and that there were no re­ports of any in­juries.

“Wock­hardt UK in Wrex­ham this morn­ing re­ceived a sus­pi­cious pack­age to site,” the com­pa­ny said in a state­ment to BBC. “All rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties were im­me­di­ate­ly no­ti­fied and en­gaged. Up­on ex­pert ad­vice we have par­tial­ly evac­u­at­ed the site pend­ing a full in­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

The British gov­ern­ment is al­so mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion.

An in­di­vid­ual who works next door to the plant told BBC he heard a “big bang” around 11:35 a.m. lo­cal time. He went out­side with two oth­ers to see what caused the noise but couldn’t de­ter­mine where it had come from. The po­lice then quick­ly closed off the road.

The Welsh plant has the ca­pa­bil­i­ty to pro­duce about 300 mil­lion dos­es of the vac­cine per year. It’s the same plant that last week saw mas­sive flood­ing near­by, though the worst of the storm ap­peared to spare the plant.

Lu­men to earn up to $14.5 mil­lion from CARB-X for an­tidiar­rheal

Lu­men Bio­science and CARB-X are work­ing on a new project to­geth­er, one that could pro­vide Lu­men with some cash.

The pair are work­ing to de­vel­op an oral mon­o­clon­al an­ti­body cock­tail to pre­vent se­ri­ous di­ar­rheal dis­eases caused by Campy­lobac­ter je­ju­ni and en­tero­tox­i­genic E. coli. CARB-X is putting up an ini­tial fund­ing com­mit­ment of $5.2 mil­lion, and the project is el­i­gi­ble for an ad­di­tion­al $8.26 mil­lion in mile­stones, sub­ject to avail­able funds at CARB-X.

Com­mon­ly re­ferred to as trav­el­er’s di­ar­rhea, the dis­eases are a ma­jor cause of death and sick­ness in the de­vel­op­ing world, par­tic­u­lar­ly in in­fants and chil­dren. The in­tend­ed prod­uct is a low-cost, ed­i­ble an­ti­body cock­tail that can be eas­i­ly shipped, stored, and used world­wide, in­clud­ing in re­gions that lack cold-chain dis­tri­b­u­tion.

Lu­men’s pro­gram has com­plet­ed Phase I and should en­ter Phase II in ear­ly 2021, CEO Bri­an Fin­row told End­points News in Sep­tem­ber. The pro­gram is al­so part­ly fund­ed by the Bill and Melin­da Gates Foun­da­tion.

CARB-X is a glob­al non-prof­it part­ner­ship that works on ac­cel­er­at­ing ear­ly an­tibac­te­r­i­al R&D to com­bat drug-re­sis­tant bac­te­ria. This deal brings the num­ber of ac­tive projects in the CARB-X port­fo­lio to 50.

Jazz CEO Bruce Cozadd didn’t beat around the bush.

In his first video meeting with GW Pharma chief Justin Gover last July 8, he offered to pay $172 a share to get the company, which had beaten the odds in getting its remarkable cannabinoid drug Epidiolex across the regulatory finish line for epilepsy. GW’s stock closed at $129 that day.

Cozadd had already done his homework on the financing to make sure he could swing it the way he wanted. He just needed to do some due diligence before making the non-binding bid firm.

TRC Capital, which has selected various biotechs like Vertex and Biogen for the “mini-tender” treatment, jumped back into the game last month with an offer to buy shares in Seagen for $151. The problem, says Seagen, is that price was 4.28% lower than what the stock was selling for at the time they made the offer on Feb. 20, giving TRC a shot at an instant windfall.

So why sell for less than what it’s worth? Seagen notes warnings from regulatory authorities that these offers essentially try to trick investors into believing that they’re being offered a premium for the stock.