Mer­ck to boost Gar­dasil pro­duc­tion; In­creased de­mand for Sanofi’s RSV drug; Take­da ad­dress­es fa­cil­i­ty ‘im­pair­ment’ 

End­points News looked in­to earn­ings call tran­scripts to find in­for­ma­tion nuggets on bio­phar­ma man­u­fac­tur­ing plans. We dis­cov­ered that Mer­ck and Sanofi are both aim­ing to man­age mar­ket de­mand, while Take­da and No­var­tis are try­ing to ad­dress man­u­fac­tur­ing con­straints and ac­cess.

Mer­ck is ramp­ing up man­u­fac­tur­ing ca­pac­i­ty at two fa­cil­i­ties to in­crease pro­duc­tion of its HPV vac­cine Gar­dasil, de­spite spec­u­lat­ing slow­er de­mand in the lat­er half of this year on its sec­ond-quar­ter call a few months ago. “We’ve made sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ments in man­u­fac­tur­ing ca­pac­i­ty and from that per­spec­tive, now we’re well po­si­tioned,” CEO Robert Davis told in­vestors on Thurs­day, ac­cord­ing to an Al­phaSense tran­script. Mer­ck tout­ed a boost in sales of Gar­dasil dur­ing the sec­ond quar­ter, say­ing they reached $2.5 bil­lion — up 47% from the same three months of last year.

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