Lon­za has been ex­pand­ing its reach across the globe, bring­ing sites in Chi­na and the US on­line this year, but now they are look­ing clos­er to home for their next ma­jor in­vest­ment.

The Swiss man­u­fac­tur­er on Fri­day an­nounced plans to con­struct a large-scale com­mer­cial drug fill and fin­ish fa­cil­i­ty in the town of Stein, Switzer­land. The new fa­cil­i­ty will be de­liv­ered through an in­vest­ment of ap­prox­i­mate­ly CHF 500 mil­lion, or $519 mil­lion, and is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed in 2026. The fa­cil­i­ty will al­so be con­struct­ed on the same cam­pus as Lon­za’s cur­rent clin­i­cal drug prod­uct fa­cil­i­ty.

Ac­cord­ing to Lon­za, this in­vest­ment will en­able the com­pa­ny to pro­vide an end-to-end ca­pa­bil­i­ty for com­mer­cial drug prod­uct man­u­fac­tur­ing at a large-scale mar­ket sup­ply, with a va­ri­ety of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal prod­ucts be­ing pro­duced at the fa­cil­i­ty in dif­fer­ent com­mer­cial for­mats.

Lon­za did not con­firm the ex­act size of the fa­cil­i­ty to End­points News. 

Pierre-Alain Ruffieux

“This strate­gic in­vest­ment com­pletes our of­fer­ing in drug prod­ucts and strength­ens our po­si­tion as a lead­ing CD­MO with an un­par­al­leled breadth of of­fer­ings across scales and tech­nolo­gies,” said Lon­za CEO Pierre-Alain Ruffieux, in a state­ment.

In an email to End­points News, the com­pa­ny said it sees strong de­mand for com­mer­cial fill-fin­ish and the new fa­cil­i­ty will en­able it to ad­dress this de­mand and of­fer an in­te­grat­ed drug sup­ply chain so­lu­tion across the en­tire life cy­cle.

Since es­tab­lish­ing drug prod­uct de­vel­op­ment and man­u­fac­tur­ing ser­vices in 2016, Lon­za has ex­pand­ed man­u­fac­tur­ing at three sites in Switzer­land in­clud­ing Basel, Stein and Visp, as well as a site in Guangzhou, Chi­na.

Lon­za has al­so been on the March in oth­er man­u­fac­tur­ing ar­eas as well. In March, the CD­MO fin­ished con­struc­tion on their API de­vel­op­ment and man­u­fac­tur­ing labs at a site in Nan­sha, Chi­na. This move was fo­cused on ex­tend­ing the ca­pa­bil­i­ties of high po­ten­cy APIs, and ex­pand­ed man­u­fac­tur­ing space to en­sure that clin­i­cal sup­ply lev­els could meet de­mand.

Ear­li­er this month, Lon­za al­so ex­pand­ed its fa­cil­i­ty in Bend, Ore­gon to man­u­fac­ture small mol­e­cules and serve as the com­pa­ny’s cen­ter of ex­cel­lence for bioavail­abil­i­ty en­hance­ment and in­haled de­liv­ery for its small mol­e­cules busi­ness unit.

How­ev­er, Lon­za is find­ing it­self in an ever-busy home man­u­fac­tur­ing mar­ket. Com­peti­tors have been turn­ing to Lon­za’s back­yard over the past year as com­pa­nies such as Cy­ti­va, Ther­mo Fish­er and lo­cal up­starts ten23 have all been build­ing or ex­pand­ing their sites in Switzer­land over the past year.

The German life science group Sartorius will be picking up French contract manufacturer Polyplus for the price of €2.4 billion, or $2.6 billion.

On Friday, Sartorius announced the acquisition through its French subgroup, Sartorius Stedim Biotech, which will be acquiring Polyplus from private investors ARCHIMED and WP GG Holdings IV. Polyplus has 270 employees and produces materials and components that go into making viral vectors that are used in cell and gene therapies. This includes DNA/RNA reagents as well as plasmid DNA. Polyplus has locations in France, Belgium, China and the US.

The European Medicines Agency’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) recommended nine drugs for approval this week while also giving thumbs up for six expanded indications, including Novo Nordisk’s approved obesity medication Wegovy for younger people. Wegovy is already approved as an obesity treatment in the EU for adults, and the new indication would allow prescriptions for adolescents aged 12 and older.

The mRNA player Moderna is further cementing its presence on the African continent.

Moderna announced on Thursday that it has finalized an agreement with Kenya’s government to partner up and bring an mRNA manufacturing facility to the east African nation. The new facility aims to manufacture up to 500 million doses of vaccines annually. Moderna also said the new facility will have the ability to spike its production capabilities to respond to public health emergencies on the continent or globally.

RNA biotech GreenLight Biosciences has been handed an offer for potential acquisition.

GreenLight said in a release that it has received a non-binding “indication of interest” from Fall Line Endurance Fund to acquire GreenLight’s capital stock for $0.60 per share in cash. The release said any potential agreement between the two parties would depend on certain conditions.

Through a special committee, the biotech will evaluate the offer but added there’s no certainty a deal will go forward. GreenLight will also not make any more announcements until a deal comes through or “otherwise determines” a statement is necessary.

A public T cell biotech’s chief executive has decided to leave the company.

TScan Therapeutics said Friday morning that CEO David Southwell stepped down earlier this week, leaving both his chief executive and board member roles. Filling in is Gavin MacBeath, the company’s CSO and COO. He became the acting CEO on Tuesday, and will continue to remain CSO and COO, TScan’s announcement read.