CD­MO WuXi STA has been on the move re­cent­ly by break­ing ground on a fa­cil­i­ty in the US, and the com­pa­ny is show­ing no signs of stop­ping its ex­pan­sion dri­ve.

The com­pa­ny an­nounced that it has opened a new ster­ile lipid nanopar­ti­cle man­u­fac­tur­ing site at its cam­pus in the city of WuXi, Chi­na. The fa­cil­i­ty has a mod­u­lar lay­out, al­low­ing for flex­i­bil­i­ty in the man­u­fac­tur­ing process, and can pro­duce 10 to 50 liters per batch.

“We are pleased to sup­port our part­ners with this state-of-the-art LNP fa­cil­i­ty to meet the grow­ing de­mand for ad­vanced in­jec­tion dosage forms. We will con­tin­ue to ex­pand our CRD­MO plat­form’s ca­pac­i­ty and ca­pa­bil­i­ties to en­able our part­ners to ac­cel­er­ate more in­no­v­a­tive drugs to mar­ket for pa­tients world­wide,” said WuXi STA CEO Minzhang Chen in a state­ment.

Pur­due Uni­ver­si­ty team nets grant to in­ves­ti­gate more sus­tain­able phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing

Re­searchers at Pur­due Uni­ver­si­ty have se­cured a $3 mil­lion grant from the Na­tion­al Sci­ence Foun­da­tion to in­ves­ti­gate cost-ef­fec­tive, ze­ro-waste ini­tia­tives for phar­ma man­u­fac­tur­ing op­er­a­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to the uni­ver­si­ty, cur­rent man­u­fac­tur­ing can cre­ate a sig­nif­i­cant amount of un­used med­i­cines and tox­ic waste, caus­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal dam­age and re­duc­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers’ prof­its.

“Our project is fo­cused on cre­at­ing a large-scale frame­work and cy­ber­in­fra­struc­ture that can help man­u­fac­tur­ing net­works to per­form more sus­tain­ably. We’ll start our proof of con­cept with the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­dus­try, giv­en its high im­pact on the Amer­i­can man­u­fac­tur­ing sys­tem dur­ing Covid,” said Shwe­ta Singh, project leader and as­so­ciate pro­fes­sor of Agri­cul­tur­al and Bi­o­log­i­cal En­gi­neer­ing and En­vi­ron­men­tal and Eco­log­i­cal En­gi­neer­ing, in a state­ment.

The project will aim to build a “cir­cu­lar econ­o­my de­sign com­pu­ta­tion­al tool,” which will help com­pa­nies reuse re­sources while al­so re­duc­ing the flow of waste, and stands in stark con­trast to the more lin­ear forms of pro­duc­tion in the in­dus­try.

The mod­el has al­ready been test­ed in agrar­i­an-based set­tings, and Singh’s team is work­ing with part­ners in the in­dus­try to de­vel­op and test the al­go­rithms.

The team will al­so work to de­vel­op a pric­ing al­go­rithm as well for the re­cy­cling of waste med­i­cines for man­u­fac­tur­ing.

Ori Biotech part­ners up with Re­silience and MD An­der­son joint ven­ture

The joint ven­ture be­tween Re­silience and MD An­der­son to cre­ate a man­u­fac­tur­ing site for cell ther­a­pies has pulled in a new part­ner.

Man­u­fac­tur­ing tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny Ori Biotech has part­nered up with the Cell Ther­a­py Man­u­fac­tur­ing Cen­ter (CTMC), the joint ven­ture that aims to cre­ate new cell ther­a­pies to fight can­cer. The col­lab­o­ra­tion will set its sights on in­dus­tri­al man­u­fac­tur­ing process­es for cell ther­a­pies.

Ac­cord­ing to Ori, the part­ner­ship will in­clude com­bin­ing its tech­nol­o­gy plat­form with the man­u­fac­tur­ing cen­ter’s ca­pa­bil­i­ties. While the part­ner­ship has ze­roed in on work­ing on one cell ther­a­py now, it plans to work on oth­er Car-T process­es and de­ter­mine its “tech­ni­cal fea­si­bil­i­ty.”

The part­ner­ship will al­so al­low the CTMC to gain pre-com­mer­cial ac­cess to Ori’s tech­nol­o­gy.

“Ori and CTMC have specif­i­cal­ly part­nered with the goal of in­creas­ing pa­tient ac­cess to po­ten­tial­ly life-sav­ing cell ther­a­pies. This part­ner­ship will have a con­sid­er­able im­pact on the cell ther­a­py field by im­ple­ment­ing in­no­v­a­tive, dig­i­tal­ly en­abled process dis­cov­ery and au­to­mat­ed man­u­fac­tur­ing so­lu­tions,” said Ja­son Fos­ter, Ori Biotech’s CEO, in a state­ment.

Man­u­fac­tur­er ac­quired by Sin­ga­pore-based pri­vate eq­ui­ty firm

Ever­stone Cap­i­tal has ac­quired a con­trol­ling stake in the man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­ny Soft­gel Health­care. Soft­gel, an In­di­an-based dosage form man­u­fac­tur­ing op­er­a­tion, cre­ates over-the-counter phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal prod­ucts — main­ly pro­bi­otics and soft gelatin cap­sules.

Ac­cord­ing to Sin­ga­pore-based Ever­stone Cap­i­tal, the ac­qui­si­tion will aim to build up Soft­gel and pro­vide the com­pa­ny with more re­sources. The fi­nan­cial terms of the deal were not dis­closed.

Soft­gel, part of the Madras Phar­ma Group, al­so main­tains eight man­u­fac­tur­ing sites and R&D op­er­a­tions.

“The com­pa­ny, with its strong R&D ca­pa­bil­i­ties and abil­i­ty to man­u­fac­ture prod­ucts in ad­vanced dosage forms, is well po­si­tioned to be a glob­al leader in the CD­MO seg­ment. We be­lieve that Ever­stone’s val­ue cre­ation play­book will help SH­PL re­al­ize its glob­al goals and pro­pel the com­pa­ny in­to its next phase of growth,” said Sameer Sain, Ever­stone Group CEO in a state­ment.

It was great getting back to a live ESMO conference/webinar in Paris followed by a live pop-up event for the Endpoints 11 in Boston. We’re staying on the road in October with our return for a live/streaming EUBIO22 in London.

Silicon Valley Bank’s Nooman Haque and I are once again jumping back into the thick of it with a slate of virtual and live events on October 12. I’ll get the ball rolling with a virtual fireside chat with Novo Nordisk R&D chief Marcus Schindler, covering their pipeline plans and BD work.