Over the past two years, the Ohio-based gene ther­a­py man­u­fac­tur­er Forge Bi­o­log­ics has man­aged to get a large amount of cap­i­tal to scale up its AAV pro­duc­tion ca­pa­bil­i­ties. And as the field con­tin­ues to grow, the com­pa­ny looks to grow along with it.

The com­pa­ny an­nounced Mon­day that it has raised $90 mil­lion in a Se­ries C fund­ing round, bring­ing the to­tal amount raised so far to $330 mil­lion. In an in­ter­view with End­points News, Forge Bi­o­log­ics CEO Tim Miller said that the round it­self took on­ly a few months to put to­geth­er as firms had ap­proached Forge to par­tic­i­pate.

As for what the round is go­ing to­ward, Miller told End­points that the fund­ing raise is meant to help ac­cel­er­ate ad­di­tion­al client of­fer­ings. Miller said that as reg­u­la­to­ry bod­ies be­come more strin­gent on how they look at gene ther­a­py prod­ucts, the com­pa­ny is help­ing to try to ad­dress that by putting in an au­to­mat­ed fill along with oth­er el­e­ments the com­pa­ny is plan­ning to put in on the front end of its AAV man­u­fac­tur­ing process.

Miller al­so said that funds are al­so ear­marked for adding pro­pri­etary tech­nol­o­gy that the com­pa­ny has been work­ing on as well as boost­ing Forge’s man­u­fac­tur­ing sys­tems and cell line de­vel­op­ment. The com­pa­ny will add more 5,000-liter biore­ac­tors to sup­port its AAV clients.

“There are al­most 400 ac­tive clin­i­cal tri­als in gene ther­a­py right now. And AAV is still the ma­jor­i­ty of vec­tor for gene ther­a­peu­tic ap­proach­es,” Miller told End­points. “So, for us, it’s about ex­pand­ing in­to those 5000-liter biore­ac­tors, those of the largest biore­ac­tors in the in­dus­try for sus­pen­sion-based growth. And, you know, as we ramp those up in 2023, it’s re­al­ly ex­cit­ing to see that there are groups that are al­ready look­ing at us­ing those for their larg­er pa­tient pop­u­la­tions.”

He al­so added that Forge is plan­ning to hire ag­gres­sive­ly on the back of the raise. With the com­pa­ny sit­ting at a head­count of around 250, Miller plans to add an­oth­er 50 to 75 em­ploy­ees in the next 12 months to help meet de­mand.

Forge’s 200,000 square-foot space in Colum­bus, OH, along with its 20 GMP suites, en­ables the com­pa­ny to ex­pand in­ter­nal­ly and to meet de­mand when need­ed so any more phys­i­cal build­outs are not in the cards cur­rent­ly.

In terms of any po­ten­tial fu­ture fund­ing or an IPO, Miller said that the com­pa­ny is cur­rent­ly bring­ing in rev­enue, al­low­ing the com­pa­ny to be more strate­gic with tak­ing on new rounds of fund­ing.

In 2020, the com­pa­ny re­ceived a $40 mil­lion Se­ries A from the PXV Fund. In 2021, the com­pa­ny got an even big­ger boost as it racked up a $120 mil­lion Se­ries B.

The Colum­bus area has al­so been grow­ing for biotech man­u­fac­tur­ing as Am­gen broke ground on a $365 mil­lion plant in New Al­bany, OH last year. In May, Am­pli­fy­Bio re­ceived $150 mil­lion to es­tab­lish a new 350,000 square-foot fa­cil­i­ty.

The round for Forge was led by Dri­ve Cap­i­tal and Ais­ling Cap­i­tal, along with a strate­gic in­vestor who was not dis­closed.

Takeda on Tuesday morning made an announcement that almost 3,000 people with the rare disease known as hypoparathyroidism were fearing.

Due to unresolved supply issues and manufacturing woes, Takeda said it will cut its losses and discontinue its hypoparathyroidism drug, known as Natpara (parathyroid hormone), halting all manufacturing of the drug by the end of 2024.

The decision to not re-commercialize Natpara will be a blow to not only the 2,400 people who were awaiting supplies of their reliable injection since 2019, but also the additional nearly 400 people who were accessing the drugs via the company’s Special Use Program as Takeda sought to resolve these manufacturing issues over the past five years.

SPACs might be slowly creeping back.

Monday evening, Estrella Biopharma said it was going public via a SPAC deal with TradeUP Acquisition Corp. The deal is set to close in the first half of 2023, and if all goes as planned, the public version of Estrella — dubbed Estrella Immunopharma — will be worth around $398.5 million.

The Bay Area biotech will also get around $45.4 million in cash, and TradeUp stockholders will get around 15% stock in the public biotech.