In 2017, a plan that could use $252 mil­lion to trans­form the home of On­tario’s ju­nior hock­ey team, the Hamil­ton Bull­dogs, was out­lined, but lat­er rec­om­mend­ed against by city staff.

Fast for­ward to this week, when it seems that no mat­ter how im­por­tant the Bull­dogs are to the com­mu­ni­ty, the gov­ern­ment is mak­ing a bet that cell and gene ther­a­py man­u­fac­tur­ing could be even more im­por­tant. On­tario’s gov­ern­ment un­veiled plans for a $580 mil­lion new cell and gene ther­a­py man­u­fac­tur­ing cen­ter set to be built just a 10-minute dri­ve from the sta­di­um. And the gov­ern­ment is foot­ing $40 mil­lion worth of the bill.

The site will be built at the Mc­Mas­ter In­no­va­tion Park, and cre­ate at least 250 new jobs by 2024. Om­ni­aBio will work on cures for can­cer, car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease, Parkin­son’s dis­ease and di­a­betes. There will be two build­ings, and the site is tak­ing the place of an old au­to­mo­tive man­u­fac­tur­ing cen­ter. The site will start to be op­er­a­tional by 2024, and it will al­low

“This is a fac­to­ry – it’s not a re­search lab, it’s not clin­i­cal stage ac­tiv­i­ty – so when you think about how to in­dus­tri­al­ize, how you go to that next scale, Hamil­ton is the per­fect lo­ca­tion,” Om­ni­aBio chair­man Michael May said to CHCH News at the event’s ground­break­ing. “Cell and gene ther­a­py is the med­i­cine of the fu­ture. We want to make sure we an­chor this in­no­va­tion with the right strat­e­gy to­ward man­u­fac­tur­ing.”

In­vest On­tario will give a $40 mil­lion loan, in ad­di­tion to an over­all in­vest­ment of $580 mil­lion for the project, and pro­vide “non-fi­nan­cial sup­port” as well, and in­clude help with tal­ent scout­ing and lo­cal skill de­vel­op­ment part­ner­ships.

“This is the kind of val­ue-added, strate­gic in­vest­ment that our gov­ern­ment is proud to cham­pi­on – cre­at­ing skilled jobs, ad­vanc­ing our health­care and dri­ving in­no­va­tion,” Min­is­ter of Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment Vic Fedeli said.

Om­ni­aBio spun out of the Toron­to-based Cen­tre for Com­mer­cial­iza­tion of Re­gen­er­a­tive Med­i­cine and builds up­on its ex­ist­ing client base. The com­pa­ny’s ul­ti­mate goal is to in­crease its bio­man­u­fac­tur­ing ca­pac­i­ty six-fold. Om­nia us­es AI to ex­plore pa­tient-spe­cif­ic da­ta, iden­ti­fy­ing the best dis­ease sub­groups to tar­get and de­sign­ing pa­tient-spe­cif­ic treat­ment op­tions.

“Om­ni­aBio Inc. will be a game-chang­er for On­tario and Cana­da. It will pro­vide miss­ing in­fra­struc­ture to al­low On­tario and Cana­di­an cell and gene com­pa­nies to re­main here, while al­so at­tract­ing for­eign com­pa­nies,” May said in a state­ment. “Cell and gene ther­a­py is Cana­da’s op­por­tu­ni­ty to be glob­al lead­ers in life sci­ences. In­vest­ing in man­u­fac­tur­ing is a key dri­ver, and we’re grate­ful to In­vest On­tario for its lead­er­ship and fore­sight.”

CCRM inked a deal to­ward the end of 2021 with Cam­bridge-based im­muno-on­col­o­gy com­pa­ny Exacis Bio­ther­a­peu­tics to man­u­fac­ture mR­NA-en­gi­neered nat­ur­al killer cell prod­ucts.

Al­so near­by in On­tario is iP­SC spe­cial­ist Cen­tu­ry Ther­a­peu­tics. The com­pa­ny’s Hamil­ton space fo­cus­es on tar­get­ing glioblas­toma brain can­cer. On­tario makes up more than 50% of the Cana­di­an life sci­ence sec­tor.

Despite whispers of a busy year for M&A, deal activity in the pharma space is actually down 30% on a semi-annualized basis, according to PwC’s latest report on deal activity. But don’t rule out larger deals in the second half of the year, the consultants said.

PwC pharmaceutical and life sciences consulting solutions leader Glenn Hunzinger expects to see Big Pharma companies picking up earlier stage companies to try and fill pipeline gaps ahead of a slew of big patent cliffs. Though a bear market continues to maul the biotech sector, Hunzinger said recent deals indicate that pharma companies are still paying above current trading prices.

The story of Amryt Pharma’s candidate for the genetic skin condition epidermolysis bullosa, or EB, will soon enter another chapter.

After the Irish drugmaker’s candidate, dubbed Oleogel-S10 and marketed as Filsuvez, was handed a CRL earlier this year, the company announced in a press release that it plans to submit a formal dispute resolution request for the company’s NDA for Oleogel-S10.

North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis made a name for himself in the 2020 election cycle as the darling of the pharma industry, accepting hundreds of thousands in campaign contributions, even from the likes of Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla.

Those contributions have led Tillis to attempt to re-write patent laws in pharma’s favor, a move which failed to gain steam in 2019, and request for a third time since January that the FDA should help stop “the false narrative that patent protections are to blame for high drug prices.”