As mR­NA tech has been made more pop­u­lar by the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic, in­vestor cash is mak­ing its way to man­u­fac­tur­ers and re­searchers.

In their lat­est move, Irish biotech Nor­max Bio­med has net­ted a €300 Mil­lion, or $305 mil­lion, in­vest­ment from pri­vate firm GEM Glob­al Yield.

The deal will see GEM pro­vide Nor­max with a share sub­scrip­tion fa­cil­i­ty of up to €50 Mil­lion for a 36-month term fol­low­ing the pub­lic list­ing of the Nor­max com­mon stock.

Nor­max will con­trol the tim­ing and max­i­mum amount of each draw­down un­der the fa­cil­i­ty and has no min­i­mum sub­scrip­tion oblig­a­tion. Nor­max is plan­ning to list it­self on ei­ther the  SIX Swiss Ex­change, SIX Dig­i­tal Ex­change (SDX), or the Lon­don Stock Ex­change as well.

Ac­cord­ing to Nor­max CEO Pe­ter Jensen, af­ter the cap­i­tal com­mit­ment, the com­pa­ny plans to al­so in­crease re­search and de­vel­op­ment of mR­NA vac­cines for Covid-19, TB, HIV and Malar­ia and de­ploy mod­u­lar mR­NA Vac­cine Fac­to­ries, in up 100 lo­ca­tions.

“In the event of an­oth­er pub­lic health emer­gency, we are al­so com­mit­ted to de­liv­er­ing fu­ture mR­NA vac­cines in 100 days, to help en­sure that Covid-19 is the last pan­dem­ic we will all suf­fer through. Dead­ly dis­eases wait for no man and no mar­ket,” Jensen said in a state­ment.

He al­so said that de­spite mar­ket con­di­tions not be­ing ide­al, Nor­max will go to mar­ket in 2022.

“Our Nor­max core busi­ness of mR­NA vac­cine R&D and man­u­fac­tur­ing can de­liv­er sus­tain­able re­turns on fun­da­men­tal health­care needs that bi­o­log­i­cal­ly will last for­ev­er. Pathogens are in­evitable, but dis­eases are not,” he said.

Ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny, it us­es mod­u­lar man­u­fac­tur­ing sites that can al­low the con­struc­tion of an mR­NA vac­cine fac­to­ry and the pro­duc­tion of mR­NA vac­cines wher­ev­er need­ed.

Cy­ti­va ac­quires a site in Michi­gan for resin man­u­fac­tur­ing

While Cy­ti­va has been plac­ing in­vest­ments in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, its lat­est move takes them to the wolver­ine state.

Ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny, it is in­vest­ing in more resins man­u­fac­tur­ing op­er­a­tions out­side of Swe­den for the first time in its his­to­ry.

The com­pa­ny has ac­quired a fa­cil­i­ty in Muskegon, Michi­gan. The new resins man­u­fac­tur­ing site is part of Cy­ti­va and Pall Cor­po­ra­tion’s $1.5 bil­lion ca­pac­i­ty ex­pan­sion in­vest­ment.

Cy­ti­va plans to trans­form the site in­to a 168,000-square-foot bio­man­u­fac­tur­ing cen­ter con­sist­ing of mul­ti­ple build­ings. Cy­ti­va is now ex­pand­ing be­yond Swe­den to man­u­fac­ture these resins. Resins are crit­i­cal in pu­ri­fy­ing and an­a­lyz­ing bio­mol­e­cules so phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and life sci­ences com­pa­nies can make med­i­cines. The fa­cil­i­ty will al­so bring in an es­ti­mat­ed 200 em­ploy­ees when com­plet­ed, but the fi­nan­cial de­tails of the project were not dis­closed.

“When you’re look­ing to help pro­vide glob­al biotech­nol­o­gy so­lu­tions to the world, it re­quires you to be nim­ble and flex­i­ble. By in­vest­ing in Muskegon, Michi­gan, we will be clos­er to our North Amer­i­can cus­tomers, who are de­vel­op­ing ad­vanced bio­ther­a­peu­tics,” said Cy­ti­va CEO Em­manuel Lign­er in a state­ment.

The site re­ceived ben­e­fits from the Michi­gan Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (MEDC) and the Michi­gan Strate­gic Fund (MSF). The site al­so has a co-op­er­a­tive agree­ment fund­ed through BAR­DA and has con­tract­ing sup­port from the DoD.

Con­struc­tion is planned to start at some point in Q3 2022, with man­u­fac­tur­ing ex­pect­ed to be­gin in 2026.

Drug man­u­fac­tur­er cen­tered on 3D print­ing nets deal with Eli Lil­ly

Chi­nese biotech Tri­astek and Eli Lil­ly have inked a deal to lever­age Tri­astek’s 3D print­ing tech­nol­o­gy to en­able tar­get­ed and pro­grammed re­lease of drugs in spe­cif­ic re­gions of the GI tract.

Ac­cord­ing to Tri­astek, the agree­ment will fo­cus on the re­lease of drugs in the in­tes­tine. Tri­astek will fo­cus on con­duct­ing an in-depth study of ex­cip­i­ent prop­er­ties and process pa­ra­me­ters to main­tain drug sta­bil­i­ty through­out the 3D print­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing process. The oth­er part of the deal will see Tri­astek iden­ti­fy­ing a dosage de­sign that will per­mit the pro­grammed re­lease of drugs in spe­cif­ic parts of the in­tes­tine, to im­prove the bioavail­abil­i­ty of oral­ly ad­min­is­tered drugs.

Tri­astek’s tech­nol­o­gy has ap­pli­ca­tions in both sol­id dosage form de­vel­op­ment and man­u­fac­tur­ing.

Lil­ly did not com­ment on the deal to End­points News.

“We en­vi­sion that the MED tech­nol­o­gy of Tri­astek can be used to solve the chal­lenges in for­mu­la­tions lead­ing to the de­vel­op­ment of clin­i­cal­ly valu­able prod­ucts for our glob­al part­ners,” said Tri­astek CEO Sen­ping Cheng.

WuXi makes sig­nif­i­cant man­u­fac­tur­ing in­vest­ments in Sin­ga­pore

WuXi AppTec and its sub­sidiary WuXi STA are stay­ing busy this week.

On Wednes­day, the par­ent com­pa­ny an­nounced a plan to build a new R&D and man­u­fac­tur­ing site in Sin­ga­pore.

The com­pa­ny in­tends to in­vest up to $1.43 bil­lion to con­struct and get the site ful­ly op­er­a­tional. The in­vest­ment is ex­pect­ed to be made in stages over the next 10 years, de­pend­ing on the com­pa­ny’s busi­ness needs.

The new site will be de­signed to ex­pand the com­pa­ny’s man­u­fac­tur­ing ca­pac­i­ty and en­hance its ca­pa­bil­i­ties but no there de­tails have been dis­closed.

“This in­vest­ment will fur­ther en­hance our ca­pac­i­ty and ca­pa­bil­i­ties so we can bet­ter sup­port our col­lab­o­ra­tive part­ners glob­al­ly and re­al­ize our shared vi­sion that every drug can be made, and every dis­ease can be treat­ed,” said WuXi CEO Ge Li in a state­ment.

Once com­plet­ed, the Sin­ga­pore site will al­so serve a role in its glob­al net­work across Asia, Eu­rope, and North Amer­i­ca.

De­ka Bio­sciences breaks ground on new fa­cil­i­ty

Mary­land-based biotech De­ka Bio­sciences has bro­ken ground on a 14,000-square-foot head­quar­ters to hold its man­u­fac­tur­ing, R&D and process de­vel­op­ment ca­pa­bil­i­ties.

The new build­ing will be in the Wash­ing­ton, DC sub­urb of Ger­man­town, MD. The com­pa­ny is ex­pect­ing to move in around the first quar­ter of next year.

The site will fur­ther de­vel­op its nov­el cy­tokine ther­a­pies.

“Our new fa­cil­i­ty will pro­vide us with es­sen­tial space to ex­pand our re­search, de­vel­op­ment and man­u­fac­tur­ing ef­forts, al­low­ing us to con­tin­ue to suc­cess­ful­ly de­vel­op our Di­akine ther­a­pies, us­ing sin­gle-use tech­nol­o­gy to scale both quick­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly,” said De­ka CEO John Mumm, in a state­ment.

Ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny, this is al­so the first fa­cil­i­ty to house a dual-tar­get­ed cy­tokine de­vel­op­ment lab in the Wash­ing­ton DC area.