Dur­ing a typ­i­cal­ly qui­et hol­i­day break in biotech, Pi­ra­mal Phar­ma made some noise, and it’s start­ing off 2022 with yet an­oth­er big an­nounce­ment.

The CD­MO will in­vest mil­lions in­to cre­at­ing a high-through­put screen­ing fa­cil­i­ty that will en­hance the al­ready ex­ist­ing in vit­ro bi­ol­o­gy ca­pa­bil­i­ties at its Ahmed­abad, In­dia drug dis­cov­ery site. The new ex­pan­sion is sched­uled to go live in Q3 of this year, and cou­ple its bi­ol­o­gy ser­vices with chem­istry ca­pa­bil­i­ties al­ready in op­er­a­tion.

The in­vest­ment comes with the hopes of im­prov­ing Pi­ra­mal’s dis­cov­ery ser­vices for its cus­tomers, and speed­ing up the drug dis­cov­ery cy­cle times. It al­so will add new staffers, in hopes of eval­u­at­ing and screen­ing 1,000 com­pounds a week. The plat­forms will be used to tar­get G-pro­tein-cou­pled re­cep­tors (GPCRs) and ki­nase-tar­get­ed ther­a­pies among oth­ers.

“As­sist­ing cus­tomers in the dis­cov­ery process is syn­er­gis­tic with our ef­forts to be a pa­tient-cen­tric CD­MO,” CEO Pe­ter DeY­oung said in a state­ment. “With this in­vest­ment, we are en­hanc­ing our dis­cov­ery plat­form by adding new in vit­ro bi­ol­o­gy ser­vices to our ex­ist­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties, mak­ing us a more in­te­grat­ed part­ner.”

At the end of March, Pi­ra­mal spent $106 mil­lion plus fu­ture mile­stones for the In­di­an pep­tide API mak­er Hem­mo Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals. The move was con­sid­ered by the com­pa­ny to be a part of a larg­er push in­to con­tract work in on­col­o­gy and meta­bol­ic ther­a­pies, and came with a man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ty in Turb­he that can pro­duce more than 30 APIs and an R&D fa­cil­i­ty in Thane. The growth in ther­a­pies for rare dis­eases and or­phan drugs has al­so in­creased the need for pep­tides, DeY­oung has said.

At the end of De­cem­ber, In­di­an CD­MO Ya­pan Bio an­nounced that it had land­ed an in­vest­ment from Pi­ra­mal Phar­ma to help en­hance its man­u­fac­tur­ing arm.

Ya­pan pro­vides bi­o­log­ic and vac­cine scale-up and man­u­fac­tur­ing ser­vices, in­clud­ing RNA, DNA, re­com­bi­nant vac­cines, gene ther­a­pies and mon­o­clon­al an­ti­bod­ies. Pi­ra­mal has tak­en on a 27.78% stake in the com­pa­ny with the in­vest­ment. Its goal is to help Ya­pan keep up the quick pace of the rapid­ly ex­pand­ing CD­MO space, in part through Pi­ra­mal’s fill-fin­ish ser­vices.

In 2020, Pi­ra­mal’s par­ent com­pa­ny con­sol­i­dat­ed all of its phar­ma units un­der one Pi­ra­mal Phar­ma um­brel­la, and put $32 mil­lion in­to its Riverview, MI API plant, which boasts 25,000 square feet. It of­fered up 20% of the phar­ma busi­ness as a part of a stake sale, giv­ing the CD­MO $490 mil­lion cash. It al­so en­tered a joint ven­ture with Al­ler­gan to man­u­fac­ture the com­pa­ny’s eye health prod­ucts.

The In­di­an com­pa­ny re­cent­ly re­ceived recog­ni­tion at the Con­fed­er­a­tion of In­di­an In­dus­try awards, when its En­nore and Pi­tham­pur sites were rec­og­nized as star cham­pi­ons and chal­lengers.

It is a proud mo­ment for us as we an­nounce that 2 of ours sites have won 3 awards at the pres­ti­gious CII Cham­pi­on and Chal­lenger Awards 2021.

Con­grat­u­la­tions to the teams at our En­nore and Pi­tham­pur sites.#Pi­ra­mal­Phar­ma pic.twit­ter.com/Nen1SAmMT5

— Pi­ra­mal Phar­ma (@Pi­ra­mal­Phar­ma) De­cem­ber 27, 2021

Ed­i­tor’s Note: For more news and ex­clu­sive cov­er­age from the man­u­fac­tur­ing beat, sub­scribe to the End­points Man­u­fac­tur­ing week­ly re­port in your read­er pro­file.

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