Gilead is adding it­self to the list of big names build­ing out mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar ex­pan­sions in Ire­land.

The phar­ma is ex­pand­ing its fa­cil­i­ties lo­cat­ed in the town of Car­rigt­wohill, Ire­land, in Coun­ty Cork in the south of the coun­try. Gilead plans to sink €45 mil­lion ($47.5 mil­lion) in­to the ex­pan­sion which will be used to con­struct a 55,714-square-foot ware­house, ac­cord­ing to a state­ment emailed to End­points News. The in­vest­ment will re­sult in a small in­crease in its em­ploy­ee head­count in Cork, a Gilead spokesper­son said, but no oth­er de­tails were giv­en be­yond that.

The spokesper­son said:

Gilead’s op­er­a­tions in Ire­land are a crit­i­cal part of its glob­al sup­ply chain. This de­vel­op­ment will fa­cil­i­tate ad­di­tion­al fu­ture in­vest­ment in the com­pa­ny’s man­u­fac­tur­ing and pack­ag­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties in the coun­try, as the site looks to sup­port an ex­pand­ed Gilead prod­uct port­fo­lio in the years ahead.

As re­port­ed by The Irish Times, Gilead aims to start con­struc­tion in April and ex­pects to be fin­ished by No­vem­ber of next year. The ware­house will pro­vide stor­age for both fin­ished prod­ucts and raw ma­te­ri­als.

The 366,000-square-foot man­u­fac­tur­ing site in Cork is re­spon­si­ble for 30% of all of Gilead’s sol­id oral drug de­vel­op­ment, with 24 of its prod­ucts be­ing pro­duced or pack­aged at Car­rigt­wohill. The site, ac­cord­ing to Gilead’s web­site, is al­so re­spon­si­ble for pro­duc­tion, qual­i­ty con­trol and pack­ag­ing for the dis­tri­b­u­tion of its prod­ucts to the EU and oth­er spots in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

Gilead is al­ready in good com­pa­ny in Car­rigt­wohill, as sev­er­al ma­jor phar­mas have man­u­fac­tur­ing sites in the town and al­so have plans to ex­pand.

The Ger­man drug man­u­fac­tur­er Mer­ck KGaA is in­vest­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly €290 mil­lion ($306.1 mil­lion) to in­crease its mem­brane man­u­fac­tur­ing ca­pac­i­ty in Car­rigt­wohill and sup­port its gene ther­a­py man­u­fac­tur­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties. The lat­est plan comes on top of a €36 mil­lion ($38 mil­lion) in­vest­ment in 2021 for an­oth­er pro­duc­tion line at its fa­cil­i­ty.

Ab­b­Vie is al­so in­ject­ing €60 mil­lion ($63.3 mil­lion) in­to its man­u­fac­tur­ing site in Car­rigt­wohill and plans to boost its head­count by 70, but oth­er de­tails were not avail­able.

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.