Mary­land-based man­u­fac­tur­er Emer­gent BioSo­lu­tions is kick­ing off the new year with a mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar con­tract to sup­ply a lo­tion used in case of chem­i­cal at­tacks.

Emer­gent said on Thurs­day that it has inked an “in­def­i­nite-de­liv­ery” and “in­def­i­nite-quan­ti­ty” pro­cure­ment con­tract to sup­ply RS­DL kits, or re­ac­tive skin de­con­t­a­m­i­na­tion lo­tion, for use by all branch­es of the US mil­i­tary. The con­tract’s val­ue is worth up to $379.6 mil­lion, and Emer­gent’s Cana­di­an sub­sidiary will serve as the sub­con­trac­tor to sup­ply the lo­tion kits to the DOD. Emer­gent’s stock $EBS was up around 9% on Fri­day af­ter­noon.

The con­tract be­gan in De­cem­ber 2022 and has four, sin­gle-year op­tion re­newals. The RS­DL kits them­selves will be used to re­move or neu­tral­ize chem­i­cal war­fare agents from the skin. This can in­clude sarin or mus­tard gas and T-2 tox­in, among oth­er chem­i­cals.

Ac­cord­ing to an Emer­gent spokesper­son in an email to End­points News, the con­tract is es­ti­mat­ed to man­u­fac­ture over 13,000 cas­es of RS­DL ac­tive kits and over 1,300 cas­es of train­ing kits.

“This con­tract is an­oth­er ex­am­ple of our long­stand­ing part­ner­ship with the US gov­ern­ment and our unique ca­pa­bil­i­ty to help de­vel­op and de­liv­er med­ical coun­ter­mea­sures for a va­ri­ety of threats, in­clud­ing bi­o­log­i­cal and chem­i­cal at­tacks, for the US and al­lied gov­ern­ments. Spe­cif­ic to RS­DL, it builds up­on our 10-year re­la­tion­ship with DoD to help pro­tect Amer­i­can ser­vice mem­bers,” said Paul Williams, se­nior vice pres­i­dent, gov­ern­ment med­ical coun­ter­mea­sures at Emer­gent, in an emailed state­ment to End­points.

Emer­gent has been con­tract­ed by the US gov­ern­ment since the 1990s to man­u­fac­ture drugs and prod­ucts for the de­fense space.

Last year, the man­u­fac­tur­er nabbed the glob­al rights for Tem­bexa from the North Car­oli­na-based biotech Chimerix, along with its 10-year BAR­DA con­tract to pro­duce 1.7 mil­lion dos­es of the drug. The con­tract was val­ued at $680 mil­lion, as well as a “prod­uct pro­cure­ment” val­ued at $115 mil­lion. Ad­di­tion­al op­tions were val­ued at $551 mil­lion, which can be com­mit­ted at BAR­DA’s dis­cre­tion.

Emer­gent al­so an­nounced in No­vem­ber that it was hand­ed a $10 mil­lion re­search award from the DOD’s Con­gres­sion­al Di­rect­ed Med­ical Re­search Pro­grams to eval­u­ate the ef­fi­ca­cy of its sin­gle-dose chikun­gun­ya virus vac­cine can­di­date.

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.

Boehringer Ingelheim reported human pharma sales of €18.5 billion on Wednesday, led by type 2 diabetes and heart failure drug Jardiance and pulmonary fibrosis med Ofev. Jardiance sales reached €5.8 billion, growing 39% year over year, while Ofev took in €3.2 billion, notching its own 20.6% annual jump.

However, Boehringer is also looking ahead with its pipeline, estimating “In the next seven years the company expects about 20 regulatory approvals in human pharma.”

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.

The FDA today approved Emergent BioSolutions’ Narcan brand naloxone nasal spray for over-the-counter sales. The nod was expected and comes on the heels of a unanimous 19-0 advisory committee vote in favor of approval last month.

The move to OTC means the opioid overdose reversal agent will now be available on grocery, convenience and gas stations shelves, as well as potentially for purchase online.