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.”

More and more women are driving innovation and taking leadership roles in biotech – as evidenced today in the release of Endpoints News’ list of the top 20 women in the R&D world – but those gains are beginning to extend across pharma sectors.

In pharma manufacturing in the US today, around 46% of all roles are occupied by women, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics for 2021. And according to a Bloomberg report, women’s roles across manufacturing roles had a massive boost after the start of the pandemic.

Pfizer has inked a deal to develop a new Covid therapy with Clear Creek Bio — a 10-person biotech out of RA Capital with an office in Cambridge, MA, but one that operates fully remotely.

Paxlovid has become a big moneymaker for Pfizer this year, projecting $22 billion in sales on the year. But the Big Pharma has begun its search for a next-generation Covid antiviral and potential combination therapies as supply of Paxlovid greatly eclipses actual use of the antiviral.

Singapore has long established itself as a major hub for pharma manufacturing, and now several big players are looking to further cement their presence in the Lion City.

Takeda, Sanofi and GSK are forming a partnership with the Singapore-based Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) and several local academic institutions, including the National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, its enterprise company called NTUitive and Singapore Institute of Technology to provide a greater boost to the manufacturing of biologics.