A pair of CD­MOs are bring­ing in new CEOs.

Tak­ing the helm at BioCi­na is Mark Wom­ack. Ac­cord­ing to his LinkedIn pro­file, Wom­ack has been in lead­er­ship po­si­tions at sev­er­al con­tract man­u­fac­tur­ers. His ca­reer spans more than 30 years, in­clud­ing roles such as CEO of the con­tract man­u­fac­tur­er KBI Bio­phar­ma and Se­lex­is SA. Be­fore that, he was CEO of Stelis Bio­phar­ma and chief busi­ness of­fi­cer of Seat­tle-based man­u­fac­tur­er AGC Bi­o­log­ics.

For­mer BioCi­na CEO Ian Wisen­berg will join the board of di­rec­tors as ex­ec­u­tive chair­man.

“I’m tremen­dous­ly ex­cit­ed to lead the high­ly tal­ent­ed and deeply com­mit­ted BioCi­na team and to build on all of the suc­cess they’ve achieved to date. Lever­ag­ing BioCi­na’s core strengths, we will be­come a pre­em­i­nent Glob­al Bi­o­log­ics CD­MO through in­dus­try-lead­ing qual­i­ty, a client-cen­tric ap­proach and on-time de­liv­ery of client pro­grams,” Wom­ack an­nounced in a re­lease.

In 2021, BioCi­na fi­nal­ized its takeover of a 60,000-square-foot for­mer Pfiz­er site in Aus­tralia to boost its mR­NA pro­duc­tion.

The In­di­ana-based cell and gene ther­a­py CD­MO Genezen has al­so made a change at the top, an­nounc­ing Steven Faval­oro as its new pres­i­dent and CEO.

Ac­cord­ing to his LinkedIn page, Faval­oro pre­vi­ous­ly served as the CFO of sev­er­al com­pa­nies in­clud­ing Ar­bor Biotech­nolo­gies, Ar­ran­ta Bio, and Bram­mer Bio. Faval­oro al­so has a decade of ex­pe­ri­ence in the vi­ral vec­tor man­u­fac­tur­ing space.

“Genezen is at an ex­cit­ing point in its jour­ney fol­low­ing the re­cent open­ing of a world-class GMP fa­cil­i­ty close to In­di­anapo­lis. I am ex­cit­ed to lead a tal­ent­ed group of col­leagues at Genezen and to part­ner with cus­tomers in de­liv­er­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of nov­el treat­ments,” Faval­oro said in a re­lease.

Faval­oro joins Genezen af­ter the com­pa­ny fin­ished a new 75,000-square-foot man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ty in Sep­tem­ber of last year.

The mRNA player Moderna is further cementing its presence on the African continent.

Moderna announced on Thursday that it has finalized an agreement with Kenya’s government to partner up and bring an mRNA manufacturing facility to the east African nation. The new facility aims to manufacture up to 500 million doses of vaccines annually. Moderna also said the new facility will have the ability to spike its production capabilities to respond to public health emergencies on the continent or globally.

Catalent will be manufacturing a low-cost version of the opioid overdose treatment naloxone as part of a contract with Harm Reduction Therapeutics.

Catalent plans to manufacture the treatment at its facility in Morrisville, NC. No financial details on the deal were disclosed.

Harm Reduction was granted priority review status for the NDA on its spray last year. The company has been working on a naloxone product since 2017. It is anticipating approval in July of this year and a US launch in early 2024.

Last year, South African-based vaccine manufacturer Aspen Pharmacare was facing reports that it had not received a single order for its manufactured Covid-19 shots and that manufacturing lines were sitting idle. But now the vaccine producer is looking to turn things around.

Aspen’s disclosure of its financial results in March unveiled that manufacturing revenue had decreased by 12% to R 603 million ($33.8 million), which Lorraine Hill, Aspen Group’s COO, said is attributable to lower Covid vaccine sales.

Thermo Fisher Scientific is putting down more roots in the Bay Area.

The manufacturer opened the doors to a new cell therapy manufacturing facility next to the University of California-San Francisco Medical Center’s Mission Bay campus and on the university’s campus.

UCSF and Thermo Fisher have had a partnership since 2021, with the new site focusing on manufacturing cell therapeutics for certain cancers, including glioblastoma and multiple myeloma. The new site plans to use Thermo Fisher’s expertise in manufacturing services to help UCSF accelerate the development of cell therapies and eventually get them into the clinic, said Dan Herring, the general manager of cell therapy services at Thermo Fisher, in an interview with Endpoints News.

Paul McKenzie took over as CEO of Australian pharma giant CSL this month, following in the footsteps of long-time CSL vet Paul Perreault.

With an eye on mRNA, and quickly commercializing its new, $3.5 million-per-shot gene therapy for hemophilia B, McKenzie and chief medical officer Bill Mezzanotte answered some questions from Endpoints News this afternoon about where McKenzie is going to take the company and what advances may be coming to market from CSL’s pipeline. Below is a lightly edited transcript.

Dallas-based biotech Nanoscope Therapeutics unveiled Phase II results on its gene therapy for a rare eye disease Thursday morning.

In the RESTORE trial, 18 patients with retinitis pigmentosa got a gene therapy called MCO-010 while nine got placebo. On a vision test called the MLYMT, the treatment group had a one-point greater change over one year in their score compared to the placebo group, the primary endpoint of the study. However, the 95% confidence interval was 0.0 to 3.0, meaning the result was not statistically significant. The p-value was not provided.