Bi­o­log­ics have been par­tic­u­lar­ly hot in 2020 with big drug­mak­ers look­ing to bol­ster their port­fo­lio — a trend that has been a se­ri­ous boon for con­tract man­u­fac­tur­ers. WuXi Bi­o­log­ics start­ed off the year adding to its own pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty in Ger­many to keep up with that ex­pect­ed de­mand, and now it’s go­ing back to Deutsch­land for an­oth­er ex­pan­sion.

Shang­hai-based Wuxi will drop rough­ly 150 mil­lion eu­ros—or $183.3 mil­lion— in an ac­qui­si­tion deal for Bay­er’s 330,000 square-foot drug sub­stance fa­cil­i­ty in Wup­per­tal, Ger­many, as it seeks to en­hance a sup­ply net­work of Covid-19 vac­cines and oth­er bi­o­log­ics. The newest fa­cil­i­ty will al­so add to WuXi’s “glob­al dual sourc­ing” strat­e­gy to add re­dun­dan­cy in­to its sup­ply chain, CEO Chris Chen said in a re­lease.

The fa­cil­i­ty hous­es three 1,000-liter per­fu­sion re­ac­tors for bi­o­log­ics as well as six 1,000-liter fed-batch biore­ac­tors, WuXi said. Those two man­u­fac­tur­ing lines will in­clude in­de­pen­dent down­stream suites, ac­cord­ing to a re­lease.

Both com­pa­nies al­so plan to en­ter in­to a long-term sub­lease agree­ment and a tran­si­tion ser­vice con­tract, they said in a press re­lease. Once the trans­ac­tion, which is still sub­ject to reg­u­la­to­ry ap­proval, is ap­proved and fi­nal­ized, WuXi will add thou­sands of liters to its man­u­fac­tur­ing out­put, the com­pa­ny said.

The for­mer Bay­er fa­cil­i­ty is ex­pect­ed to be ready for drug sub­stance and prod­uct man­u­fac­tur­ing in 2021; by 2023, WuXi ex­pects its to­tal ca­pac­i­ty at fa­cil­i­ties in the U.S., Chi­na, Ire­land, Ger­many and Sin­ga­pore will ex­ceed 280,000 liters.

WuXi has now book­end­ed 2020 with pur­chas­ing Bay­er fa­cil­i­ties in Ger­many, as it al­so bought a Lev­erkusen man­u­fac­tur­ing plant in Jan­u­ary. That site al­so serves as a back-up pro­duc­tion site for Bay­er’s Ko­val­try, a he­mo­phil­ia A ther­a­peu­tic.

As of June 30, WuXi said it had a to­tal of 286 in­te­grat­ed projects, in­clud­ing 141 projects in pre-clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment stage, 125 projects in ear­ly-phase clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment, 19 projects in late-phase de­vel­op­ment and one project in com­mer­cial man­u­fac­tur­ing.

The firehose of biopharma news is gushing these days.

That’s why broader and deeper is the theme for 2021 at Endpoints. You can expect new coverage outside our core R&D focus, with deeper reporting in some key areas. When John Carroll and I launched Endpoints nearly five years ago, we were wading in waist-high waters. Now we’re a team of 25 full-time staffers (and growing) with plans to cover the flood of biopharma news, Endpoints-style.

Eli Lilly says bamlanivimab lowered the risk of contracting symptomatic Covid-19 in a first-of-its-kind trial involving nursing home residents and staff, paving the way for a new option to protect against the virus.

But how big of an impact it might have, and what role it will play, at a time vaccines are being rolled out to the exact population it is targeting still remains unclear.

Among 965 participants in the study — all of whom tested negative for the coronavirus at baseline — the number of symptomatic cases reported in the bamlanivimab arm was 57% lower than that in the placebo arm (odds ratio 0.43, p=0.00021). In addition to that primary endpoint, all secondary endpoints reached statistical significance.

As reports crop up that deliveries of Pfizer and BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine are being unexpectedly cut, Italy wonders if it can take the vaccine developers to court, according to the Wall Street Journal. 

After its shipment for this week was cut by 29%, the Italian government consulted its attorney general about taking legal action, the WSJ reported. Pfizer and BioNTech had warned the EU and Canada last week that their allocations would be reduced as Pfizer upgrades its Belgium factory. What Italy says it doesn’t appreciate, though, is the short notice.

About 15 months since closing a $28 million Series A, a San Diego protein-degradation upstart returned to the venture well Thursday with an extension of that round and some new hires, including one of the city’s best-connected biotech execs.

Plexium has bagged an additional $35 million in financing, the biotech said, money that will push undisclosed oncology and immuno-oncology programs into the clinic. In addition, longtime industry vet Mike Grey is jumping on as chairman of the board, and two others from Thursday’s leads — Adam Goulburn from Lux Capital and Rob Hopfner from Pivotal BioVentures — joined the board too.

It’s time for a new FDA commissioner to come on board, a rite of passage for Joe Biden’s administration that should help seal the new president’s rep on seeking out the experts to lead the government over the next 4 years.

As of now, the competition for the top job appears to have narrowed down to 2 people: The longtime CDER chief Janet Woodcock and Joshua Sharfstein, the former principal deputy at the FDA under Peggy Hamburg. Both were appointed by Barack Obama.