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.

Seagen is riding the wave of two new priority reviews straight to the FDA.

The Bothell, WA-based biotech and their partners at Astellas announced Monday that two supplemental BLAs for Padcev had been accepted by US regulators. FDA has set Aug. 17 as the PDUFA date for the reviews.

“With our recent regulatory submissions, we intend to provide the highest level of clinical evidence supporting Padcev use — overall survival data from a randomized Phase III trial — and expand availability in multiple countries where there is unmet medical need,” said Astellas oncology chief Andrew Krivoshik.

As Congress considers whether to adopt sweeping new legislation to lower prescription drug prices across the board, the Kaiser Family Foundation is out with a new report on Monday showing how a more targeted approach on a subset of drugs might be a more efficient way to save government funds.

“This analysis shows that Medicare Part D and Part B spending is highly concentrated among a relatively small share of covered drugs, mainly those without generic or biosimilar competitors,” wrote Juliette Cubanski, deputy director of the program on Medicare policy at KFF, and Tricia Neuman, SVP of KFF. “Focusing drug price negotiation or reference pricing on a subset of drugs that account for a disproportionate share of spending would be an efficient use of administrative resources, though it would also leave some potential savings on the table.”

It’s always a surprise when a court has to step in to tell the FDA that it erred in performing one of its main duties: classifying whether a medical product is drug or a device.

But that’s what the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia did on Friday, making clear to the world’s top drug regulator that Genus Medical Technologies’ contrast agent barium sulfate (also known as Vanilla SilQ) should not be considered a drug, as the FDA had said, but a medical device.

In the few short months since President Donald Trump left office, his former department heads are reportedly having a difficult time finding employment. But for Ben Carson, Trump’s former housing secretary, that’s not a problem anymore after biotech came calling.

Carson, a former GOP presidential candidate and erstwhile HUD head, has joined Galectin Therapeutics as a “special consultant” the biotech hopes will help raise its profile and provide an entrée to key business partnerships, the company said Monday.