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.

Following a promise last year to go “big and fast in breast cancer,” Gilead has secured a win for Trodelvy in the most common form.

The drug was approved to treat HR-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer patients who’ve already received endocrine-based therapy and at least two other systemic therapies for metastatic cancer, Gilead announced on Friday.

Trodelvy won its first indication in metastatic triple-negative breast cancer back in 2020, and has since added urothelial cancer to the list. HR-positive HER2-negative breast cancer accounts for roughly 70% of new breast cancer cases worldwide per year, according to senior VP of oncology clinical development Bill Grossman, and many patients develop resistance to endocrine-based therapies or worsen on chemotherapy.

Sanofi expects its RSV antibody jointly developed with AstraZeneca will be available next season, executive VP of vaccines Thomas Triomphe announced on the company’s quarterly call.

Beyfortus, also known as nirsevimab, was approved in the EU back in November and is currently under FDA review with an expected decision coming in the third quarter of this year. The news comes as the FDA plans to hold advisory committee meetings over the next couple months to review RSV vaccines from Pfizer and GSK.

After a whopping $4 billion asset buy from Nimbus Therapeutics, along with a $400 million deal with Hutchmed for a colorectal cancer drug, Takeda executives touted pipeline optimism on its latest earnings call this week.

That’s because the TYK2 inhibitor for psoriasis Takeda is getting from Nimbus, along with the Hutchmed fruquintinib commercialization outside of China, are just two of what it reports are 10 late-stage development programs of promising candidates.