When you’re aim­ing to be the “Fox­conn” or “Ama­zon Web Ser­vices” of biotech man­u­fac­tur­ing, it’s all about do­ing things dif­fer­ent­ly.

Some of those traits are on dis­play in Re­silience’s lat­est deal, a strate­gic col­lab­o­ra­tion to make Be Bio’s B cell ther­a­pies — or at least the ini­tial rare dis­ease pro­grams.

The pact marks the lat­est deal for a fast mov­ing bio­man­u­fac­tur­ing start­up, which has re­la­tion­ships in place with Take­da, Mod­er­na, blue­bird and Har­vard.

First off, there’s no up­front pay­ment. Re­silience is shoul­der­ing the man­u­fac­tur­ing costs in ex­change for the rights to “down­stream eco­nom­ics,” in­clud­ing what Be Bio CEO Joanne Smith-Far­rell calls “mod­est” mile­stones and roy­al­ties on any com­mer­cial prod­ucts. Giv­en Be Bio is still pre­clin­i­cal, that’d be years down the road, if ever.

The biotech will al­so en­joy a ded­i­cat­ed team over at Re­silience to work on­ly on its projects.

“It’s just a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent thing than I’ve ever ex­pe­ri­enced with oth­er CD­MOs,” said Smith-Far­rell, a for­mer on­col­o­gy ex­ec at blue­bird bio.

Re­silience is the brain­child of Bob Nelsen, the co-founder and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of ARCH, which al­so led Be Bio’s re­cent $130 mil­lion round. Lever­ag­ing the unique at­trib­ut­es of B cells, the promise (in rare dis­eases) is to en­gi­neer a durable treat­ment op­tion that com­bines the ben­e­fits of en­zyme re­place­ment ther­a­pies and gene ther­a­pies.

Be Bio is keep­ing the process man­u­fac­tur­ing and non-GMP man­u­fac­tur­ing in-house, while Re­silience picks up the tab on GMP man­u­fac­tur­ing.

“We haven’t got it yet on time­lines to the clin­ic,” she said, “but what I would say is it’s fair to as­sume that we’re putting this deal in place now for a rea­son.”

Gilead is mounting its counterfeit drug lawsuit, naming two “kingpins” and a complex network of conspirators who allegedly sold imitation bottles of its HIV meds, some of which ended up in US pharmacies.

The pharma giant on Wednesday provided an update on what it called a “large-scale, sophisticated counterfeiting conspiracy,” accusing two new defendants of “leading and orchestrating” a scheme to sell hundreds of millions of dollars in illegitimate drugs posing as meds such as Biktarvy and Descovy.

It was great getting back to a live ESMO conference/webinar in Paris followed by a live pop-up event for the Endpoints 11 in Boston. We’re staying on the road in October with our return for a live/streaming EUBIO22 in London.

Silicon Valley Bank’s Nooman Haque and I are once again jumping back into the thick of it with a slate of virtual and live events on October 12. I’ll get the ball rolling with a virtual fireside chat with Novo Nordisk R&D chief Marcus Schindler, covering their pipeline plans and BD work.

While it is not uncommon for a biotech to go down the route of having the product manufactured by a contract organization, one small biotech is looking to keep its card close to its chest.

Vor Biopharma has started manufacturing operations at an in-house facility at its HQ in Cambridge, MA after beginning construction last summer.

According to the biotech, the facility aims to develop Vor’s hematopoietic stem cells (eHSCs) and CAR-T therapies for patients with blood cancers. The site will initially manufacture a clinical supply of its candidate VCAR33allo to support its IND, which is slated to be submitted in the first half of next year. It also plans to transfer the production of VOR33 to the facility. Vor is getting to work quickly as engineering runs for VCAR33allo has started this week.

The US government is all set to buy $10.7 million worth of Siga Technologies’ monkeypox oral antiviral, the company announced Thursday.

Of the total doses, $5.1 million worth of oral antivirals called Tpoxx (tecovirimat) will be delivered this year, with the US Department of Defense having the option of buying the rest at a later point.

The new contract follows an earlier one in which the government had purchased $7.4 million worth of Tpoxx from the company.