Just a cou­ple of deals in a cou­ple of days for Catal­ent.

The New Jer­sey-based CD­MO’s lat­est move is a long-term sup­ply agree­ment with Ery­tech Phar­ma, a French clin­i­cal-stage bio­phar­ma, and the pur­chase of its cell ther­a­py man­u­fac­tur­ing site in the moth­er­land.

The deal is good for $44.5 mil­lion, and 40 of Ery­tech’s Prince­ton, NJ em­ploy­ees will be of­fered em­ploy­ment by the site’s new own­er. Catal­ent will now make Ery­tech’s lead can­di­date Gras­pa for clin­i­cal and com­mer­cial sup­ply in the US. Gras­pa is in Phase I tri­als in pa­tients suf­fer­ing from pan­cre­at­ic can­cer right now and is in talks with the FDA for a BLA sub­mis­sion in hy­per­sen­si­tive ALL. That’s tar­get­ed in Q3 2022.

“Ery­tech will now fur­ther fo­cus cap­i­tal re­sources on the de­vel­op­ment of po­ten­tial­ly trans­for­ma­tive ther­a­peu­tics for se­ri­ous dis­eases,” CEO Gil Beyen said in a state­ment. “We are al­so con­tin­u­ing to eval­u­ate fur­ther strate­gic op­tions for the com­pa­ny, in­clud­ing ad­di­tion­al part­ner­ships and ad­di­tion of com­ple­men­tary as­sets, through which we can lever­age our ERYCAPS® plat­form and our de­vel­op­ment and man­u­fac­tur­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties.”

The deal comes just days af­ter Catal­ent an­nounced that it was dou­bling down on its faith in Bloom­ing­ton, IN as the home of drug sub­stance man­u­fac­tur­ing with $350 mil­lion and the an­nounce­ment that it would add up to 1,000 new jobs in the up­com­ing years. That project builds up­on a pre­vi­ous­ly pledged 600 jobs and $50 mil­lion up­grade that came with ded­i­cat­ing a fill­ing line to Mod­er­na’s Covid-19 jab.

Ery­tech made waves four years ago when it re­vealed im­pres­sive Phase IIb da­ta for Gras­pa, but that hype fiz­zled out a bit when it failed the Phase III piv­otal. That led the stock to fall 30% af­ter the haz­ard ra­tio came in at 0.92 with a p-val­ue of 0.375.

Catal­ent will of­fer up its late-stage and com­mer­cial man­u­fac­tur­ing ex­per­tise to help Ery­tech with pro­duc­tion, reg­u­la­to­ry in­spec­tions and ap­provals. Its 30,900 square-foot site has the flex­i­bil­i­ty to sup­port mul­ti­ple cell ther­a­py pro­duc­tion re­quire­ments and ca­pac­i­ties, and Catal­ent plans on build­ing out that site, us­ing the staff it al­ready has to broad­en its man­u­fac­tur­ing port­fo­lio.

Man­ja Boer­man

Mean­while, Ery­tech will keep its Ly­on, France site. The com­pa­ny re­port­ed 2021 earn­ings of $38.1 mil­lion, and that will jump up to $60 mil­lion up­on the clos­ing of this deal. The sale of the Prince­ton site will al­so cut $7.5 mil­lion a year in op­er­at­ing costs. The deal is ex­pect­ed to fund Ery­tech’s next stage of op­er­a­tions un­til the mid­dle of 2024.

“The tal­ent­ed and ex­pe­ri­enced staff al­ready em­ployed at the fa­cil­i­ty, the ca­pa­bil­i­ties it has in place, and the op­por­tu­ni­ty to quick­ly add fur­ther ca­pac­i­ty on the same site, al­lows Catal­ent to ex­pand rapid­ly to cre­ate a U.S. cam­pus and cen­ter of ex­cel­lence for cell ther­a­py de­vel­op­ment and man­u­fac­tur­ing that will serve cus­tomers around the world,” Catal­ent pres­i­dent of cell and gene ther­a­py Man­ja Boer­man said in a state­ment.

Rising monkeypox cases have put the US on high alert as it announces a national health emergency, which grants the government more power in its response.

The news comes as Bavarian Nordic continues to fill orders for its Jynneos vaccine and other companies – including Moderna – consider jumping into the vaccine race. Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that the US has allowed around 20 million doses of smallpox vaccine in its stockpile to expire.

Forget buyer’s remorse, Pfizer is likely feeling pretty good about its $11.6 billion Biohaven takeover deal following reports of a 57% sales boost for migraine med Nurtec.

Biohaven reported in Q2 results on Friday that it’s cleared the necessary antitrust hurdles to move forward with the sale of its calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) assets to Pfizer. However, because the company is “focused on workstreams related to the closing” of the deal, it did not host a call with analysts and investors.