Al­most halfway in­to the big turn­around year that Hal Bar­ron has blue­print­ed for Glax­o­SmithK­line’s R&D team, the Big Phar­ma is un­veil­ing a $231 mil­lion man­u­fac­tur­ing deal to match the grow­ing com­mer­cial port­fo­lio.

In a new part­ner­ship, GSK has en­list­ed Sam­sung Bi­o­log­ics to pro­vide ad­di­tion­al man­u­fac­tur­ing ca­pac­i­ty for its com­mer­cial spe­cial­ty care drugs, be­gin­ning with the lu­pus drug Benlysta. Pro­duc­tion will take place in Sam­sung’s fa­cil­i­ties in Ko­rea, the com­pa­ny told End­points News.

“This ca­pac­i­ty will be flex­i­ble de­pend­ing on GSK’s fu­ture needs and will sup­ple­ment GSK’s ex­ist­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing net­work,” the com­pa­ny wrote in a state­ment.

Em­ma Walm­s­ley GSK

Flex­i­bil­i­ty was sim­i­lar­ly the core theme in an $120 mil­lion up­grade an­nounced last Sep­tem­ber, when ex­ecs com­mit­ted to ex­pand­ing a long­time site in Up­per Meri­on, Penn­syl­va­nia.

The ma­jor­i­ty of Benlysta will still be man­u­fac­tured at Rockville, MD, one of nine US man­u­fac­tur­ing sites GSK cur­rent­ly op­er­ates and the lo­ca­tion for a new $150 mil­lion fa­cil­i­ty. Tech trans­fer to Sam­sung will start in 2020, with the first com­mer­cial sup­ply ex­pect­ed in 2022.

Ear­ly in Feb­ru­ary Bar­ron and CEO Em­ma Walm­s­ley out­lined plans for a “new GSK” in which the vac­cine unit would in­te­grate with the phar­ma group and non-core as­sets would be auc­tioned off, trig­ger­ing a round of lay­offs. Six po­ten­tial ap­provals are ex­pect­ed as Bar­ron’s 2-year cam­paign to re­verse the drug­mak­er’s lack­lus­ter de­vel­op­ment rep bears fruit.

VBL Therapeutics announced that it is on track in a Phase III trial of its drug VB-111 (ofranergene obadenovec) to treat platinum-resistant ovarian cancer in combination with paclitaxel.

After conducting its second interim analysis, the independent Data Safety Monitoring Committee (DSMC) recommended that Israel-based VBL continue full steam ahead. The committee looked at unblinded overall survival rate, which is the primary endpoint of the study, dubbed OVAL. The first analysis evaluated CA-125 response.

After the police killing of George Floyd, a flurry of pharma and biotech companies, executives and investors jumped out to make statements, either expressing support for Black Lives Matter and the protests or condemning systemic racism.

Now, a Big Pharma company is publicly putting some teeth behind those statements. This morning, Bristol Myers Squibb announced they would spend $300 million on a broad effort to reduce racial health disparities, and diversify both their clinical trials and their own executive team and workforce.

Almost a year ago to the day, Regeneron announced solid Phase III testing results for evinacumab, a compound that’s designed to lower LDL cholesterol in patients who need treatment beyond a PCSK9 inhibitor. As that anniversary approaches, the biotech is potentially one step closer to putting it on the market.

The FDA has granted priority review and accepted a BLA for evinacumab as a supplement to other lipid-lowering therapies in individuals with homozygous familial hypercholesterolemia, Regeneron announced Wednesday morning. Regeneron’s target action date is next February 11.

Roche had big plans for etrolizumab. Eyeing a hyper-competitive IBD and Crohn’s market where they have not historically been a player, the company rolled out 8 different Phase III trials, testing the antibody for two different uses across a range of different patient groups.

On Monday, Roche released results for 4 of those studies, and they mark a decided setback for both the Swiss pharma and their biotech sub Genentech, potentially spelling an end to a drug they put over half-a-decade and millions of dollars behind.