In a big year for con­tract man­u­fac­tur­ers, Mass­a­chu­setts’ Ther­mo Fish­er Sci­en­tif­ic has emerged as a lead­ing part­ner for drug­mak­ers fight­ing the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic, par­tic­u­lar­ly in di­ag­nos­tics and ther­a­peu­tics. Now, buoyed by that suc­cess and look­ing to scale up its vac­cine of­fer­ings, Ther­mo Fish­er is plot­ting big ex­pan­sion across its glob­al port­fo­lio.

Ther­mo Fish­er will ex­pand its fa­cil­i­ties in Greenville, NC; Fer­enti­no and Mon­za, Italy; and Swin­don, Eng­land, to ex­pand its range of of­fer­ings for cus­tomers”whether it’s an emerg­ing biotech work­ing on a vac­cine for a nov­el virus or a high-vol­ume phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal man­u­fac­tur­er de­liv­er­ing nec­es­sary med­i­cines at scale,” a spokesper­son told End­points News.

Ther­mo is keep­ing the cap­i­tal out­lay for the projects un­der wraps, but here’s more about each site’s ex­pan­sion:

Greenville, NC: A new, stand­alone 130,000-square-foot build­ing which com­pris­es two live-virus fill­ing lines (op­er­a­tional in 2022), and sev­en oth­er new lines in­clud­ing com­mer­cial-scale liq­uid fill­ing lines and a de­vel­op­ment line for liq­uid and lyophilized drug prod­ucts and sy­ringes (op­er­a­tional in 2021).

Fer­enti­no, Italy: A 28,000-square-foot de­vel­op­ment build­ing will of­fer new ca­pac­i­ty for one flex­i­ble line of de­vel­op­ment projects and small-scale com­mer­cial man­u­fac­tur­ing (op­er­a­tional in 2022), with the space to add fu­ture ca­pa­bil­i­ties. The site will al­so add on a new high-ca­pac­i­ty com­mer­cial liq­uid fill­ing line that will be op­er­a­tional in 2021.

Mon­za, Italy: This site will ex­pand its ster­ile fill-fin­ish line ca­pac­i­ty, with three new lines ex­pect­ed to be op­er­a­tional in 2021, in­clud­ing one high-ca­pac­i­ty line for liq­uid and lyophilized fill­ing, one pre-filled sy­ringe/pre-filled car­tridge line for medi­um batch pro­duc­tion and one flex­i­ble mul­ti-pur­pose line for low vol­ume fill­ing of vials, pre-filled sy­ringes and pre-filled car­tridges in nest and tub con­fig­u­ra­tions.

Swin­don, Eng­land: The Swin­don ex­pan­sion will ac­tu­al­ly re­vamp the ex­ist­ing 30,000-square-foot site in­to a new, full-scale com­mer­cial man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ty, the spokesper­son said. The site, which will be op­er­a­tional in 2021, will add one pro­duc­tion line for liq­uid and one line for lyophilized — in ad­di­tion to “ex­ten­sive” cold-chain stor­age for vac­cines that re­quire ul­tra-low tem­per­a­tures.

The ex­pan­sions make clear the ever-grow­ing need for vi­able and ster­ile vac­cine pro­duc­tion, even out­side of the cur­rent break­neck ef­forts to pro­duce a Covid-19 vac­cine. Ther­mo Fish­er has wad­ed in­to that race as well, agree­ing in Sep­tem­ber to pro­duce In­ovio’s Covid-19 vac­cine (INO-4800) be­gin­ning in 2021.

Al­so on the Covid-19 front, Ther­mo Fish­er in May en­tered in­to a deal with Cal­i­for­nia-based Hu­mani­gen to help scale up man­u­fac­tur­ing of the biotech’s lenl­izum­ab, a clin­i­cal-stage can­di­date for cy­tokine storms that the com­pa­ny is test­ing in pa­tients with more se­vere cas­es of the res­pi­ra­to­ry virus. In Sep­tem­ber, Ther­mo Fish­er agreed to a deal with the US gov­ern­ment to pro­duce the vi­ral trans­port me­dia tubes need­ed to trans­port Covid-19 test sam­ples.

Pri­or to the four ex­pan­sion sites an­nounced this week, the com­pa­ny al­so an­nounced re­cent­ly an ex­pan­sion in Sin­ga­pore that in­cludes a high-speed ster­ile line for live-virus fill­ing. Ther­mo Fish­er al­so agreed to a joint ven­ture with In­no­force to build a new phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal ser­vices fa­cil­i­ty in Hangzhou, Chi­na that fo­cus­es on in­te­grat­ed bi­o­log­ics drug sub­stance and ster­ile drug prod­uct de­vel­op­ment and man­u­fac­tur­ing.

Both of those sites are ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed in 2022.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is trying so hard to politicize the FDA and demonize the federal government that he entered into an alternate universe on Monday evening in describing a recent FDA action to restrict the use of two monoclonal antibody, or mAb, treatments for Covid-19 that don’t work against Omicron.

Without further ado, let’s break down his statement from last night, line by line, adjective by adjective.

The summer before Cellino CEO and co-founder Nabiha Saklayen started at Harvard, she lost her grandmother following complications to diabetes. Before then, she hadn’t taken a biology class since ninth or tenth grade — the mark of a classic physicist — but it was then she decided she wanted the rest to sit at the intersection of the two for the rest of her career

Combine that with being across the way from the University’s stem cell institute in Cambridge, and you get the birth of Cellino, an autonomous cell therapy manufacturing company that just announced the closing of its Series A.

Bristol Myers Squibb recently joined 11 of its peer pharma companies in limiting how many contract pharmacies can access certain drugs discounted by a federal program known as 340B.

Bristol Myers is just the latest in a series of high-profile pharma companies moving in their own direction as the Biden administration’s Health Resources and Services Administration struggles to rein in the drug discount program for the neediest Americans.

Amgen wanted to know how people with asthma really felt about daily life with the disease. So it bought a promoted tweet on Twitter noting the not-so-simple realities of life with asthma and ended the post with a #DearAsthma hashtag, a megaphone emoji and a re-tweet button.

That was just over one week ago and the responses haven’t stopped. More than 7,000 posts so far on Twitter replied to #DearAsthma to detail struggles of daily life, expressing humor, frustration and sometimes anger. More than a few f-bombs have been typed or gif-ed in reply to communicate just how much many people “hate” the disease.