Dai­ichi Sankyo is look­ing to es­tab­lish a man­u­fac­tur­ing ap­pa­ra­tus close to home to be­gin pro­duc­ing the first made-in-Japan mR­NA Covid vac­cines.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­port from Nikkei Asia, Dai­ichi Sankyo is in­stalling equip­ment that will have the ca­pac­i­ty to pro­duce 20 mil­lion dos­es a year by the fis­cal year 2024. The re­port says that equip­ment has been in­stalled at a lo­ca­tion in the city of Ki­ta­mo­to, Japan, north­east of Tokyo, and is op­er­at­ed by the sub­sidiary Dai­ichi Sankyo Biotech.

Dai­ichi Sankyo will even­tu­al­ly use gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies to add an­oth­er mR­NA vac­cine pro­duc­tion sec­tion at the site by 2027, ac­cord­ing to the re­port. But de­tails such as the cost of the fa­cil­i­ty, when it will of­fi­cial­ly open, or the num­ber of vac­cines that the fa­cil­i­ty plans to man­u­fac­ture have not been giv­en.

Ac­cord­ing to a Dai­ichi Sankyo spokesper­son in an email to End­points News, the man­u­fac­tur­ing site has sup­plied in­fluen­za vac­cines and oth­er vac­cines in the past.

“The fa­cil­i­ties are now be­ing ex­pand­ed at Dai­ichi Sankyo Biotech to ac­com­mo­date man­u­fac­tur­ing of the mR­NA COVID vac­cine.  This is the first plant in Japan to sub­mit NDA for COVID mR­NA vac­cine in Jan­u­ary,” the Dai­ichi Sankyo spokesper­son said in the email.

In Jan­u­ary, Dai­ichi Sankyo’s mR­NA vac­cine for Covid-19, dubbed DS-5670, was sub­mit­ted for mar­ket­ing ap­proval to Japan­ese reg­u­la­to­ry au­thor­i­ties. The phar­ma said in a re­lease at the time that it will plan to move for­ward with the de­vel­op­ment of the vac­cine to counter the Omi­cron strain as well.

Japan has al­so caught the in­ter­est of an­oth­er ma­jor vac­cine mak­er, Mod­er­na. Last Sep­tem­ber, an­oth­er Nikkei Asia re­port said that Mod­er­na CEO Stéphane Ban­cel would like to con­struct a fa­cil­i­ty in Japan and cen­tral­ize all process­es and man­u­fac­tur­ing in­to one fa­cil­i­ty.

Ed­i­tor’s note: This sto­ry has been up­dat­ed with com­ment from Dai­ichi Sankyo. 

Microcap biotech Seelos Therapeutics is halting enrollment of its study in spinocerebellar ataxia type 3 (also known as Machado-Joseph disease) because of “financial considerations,” and in order to focus on other studies, the company said today, adding that the pause would be temporary.

The study will continue with the patients who have already enrolled, and the data from them will be used to decide whether to continue enrolling others in the future.

Otonomy may be shutting down, but the lessons learned there will live on at another biotech working on new treatments for hearing loss.

San Francisco-based Spiral Therapeutics has bought certain assets related to three of Otonomy’s programs, ranging from data, patent rights, and know-how to inventory. That includes data around Otonomy’s twice-failed lead program, OTO-104 (Otividex), a sustained-exposure formulation of dexamethasone.

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.

The government of the United Kingdom is giving out grants to several manufacturers that have a presence in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The government announced that four companies, including Ipsen, contract manufacturer Pharmaron, DNA manufacturer Touchlight and diagnostic test producer Randox, will receive a total of £277 million ($341.1 million). According to a release from the UK government, this represents the first portion of grants from the Life Sciences Innovative Manufacturing Fund.