The pan­dem­ic has changed Pfiz­er.

It’s not just the $15 bil­lion in cash they ex­pect their BioN­Tech-part­nered Covid-19 vac­cine to bring in 2021. Rather, the phar­ma gi­ant is poised for a trans­for­ma­tion from a ma­jor part­ner in mR­NA tech­nol­o­gy to a ma­jor leader with its own de­vel­op­ment and man­u­fac­tur­ing ex­per­tise, with plans to grow the R&D team in Pearl Riv­er, NY by at least 50.

“We are the best po­si­tioned com­pa­ny right now to take it to the next step be­cause of our size and our ex­per­tise,” CEO Al­bert Bourla told the Wall Street Jour­nal in a sit-down in­ter­view.

With­in the past year, he not­ed, Pfiz­er’s sci­en­tists and en­gi­neers have gained a decade’s worth of ex­pe­ri­ence from work­ing with BioN­Tech, with whom they’ve been col­lab­o­rat­ing since 2018.

“We like work­ing with BioN­Tech, but we don’t need to work with BioN­Tech,” he added. “We have our own ex­per­tise de­vel­oped.”

Bourla, af­ter all, sees the suc­cess of Pfiz­er and BioN­Tech’s vac­cine — which he had de­cid­ed to fund 100%, shun­ning any gov­ern­ment sup­port — as enor­mous val­i­da­tion for the shift he’s been spear­head­ing at Pfiz­er, shed­ding the weight of lega­cy busi­ness­es to make room for a care­ful­ly pipeline-fo­cused com­pa­ny. Just as he’s con­fi­dent that Pfiz­er has edged out a lead for it­self in the sud­den­ly ac­cel­er­at­ed mR­NA race along­side Mod­er­na, he is in­tent on keep­ing it.

While the CEO didn’t go in­to de­tails about his plans, the more ad­vanced mR­NA vac­cine can­di­dates lin­ing up in Pfiz­er’s pipeline ap­pear to still come from BioN­Tech. In par­tic­u­lar, the com­pa­ny is set to take over the R&D, man­u­fac­tur­ing and com­mer­cial­iza­tion for an in­fluen­za jab this Ju­ly as part of the 2018 deal with BioN­Tech, hav­ing al­ready done part of the tech trans­fer.

Un­der that pact, Pfiz­er could al­so score two oth­er ex­per­i­men­tal vac­cines against cy­tomegalovirus and res­pi­ra­to­ry syn­cy­tial virus.

With a be­spoke pro­duc­tion net­work that now boasts of spe­cial equip­ment and raw ma­te­ri­als re­quired to make mR­NA vac­cines, Pfiz­er would be re­ly­ing less on sup­pli­ers — both to make boost­er Covid-19 shots, which they are now test­ing in the clin­ic, and the new shots to come.

They would com­ple­ment a slate of vac­cines in the port­fo­lio over­seen by Kathrin Jansen that are made from more tra­di­tion­al tech­nolo­gies such as Pre­vnar 13, the top-sell­ing pneu­mo­coc­cal shot that yield­ed $6 bil­lion in sales last year; and 20vP­nC, the fol­low-on vac­cine that’s now un­der pri­or­i­ty re­view at the FDA. Oth­er mid- and late-stage vac­cines are aimed at fight­ing RSV, meningo­coc­cal in­fec­tions, in­va­sive Group B strep­to­coc­cus, C. dif­fi­cile and Ly­me dis­ease.

The US pharma giant Eli Lilly will be increasing its financial commitment to a manufacturing site in Ireland.

According to a release from Ireland’s Industrial Development Agency (IDA) on Monday, Lilly will be investing another $500 million in its manufacturing facility in Limerick, Ireland — bringing the total investment into the facility to approximately $1 billion.

In January of last year, Lilly announced it was placing a $446 million investment into the site to expand active pharmaceutical ingredient and monoclonal antibody production.

DC District Court Judge Christopher Cooper today granted Vanda Pharma’s request to require the FDA to disclose more info on the complete response letter for its sleep disorder drug Hetlioz.

The melatonin receptor agonist is approved by the FDA to treat non-24-hour sleep-wake disorder, a circadian rhythm disorder. But in 2018 Vanda filed a supplemental application to market Hetlioz as a treatment for jet lag, which the FDA rejected in August 2019, with few details on what Vanda needed to correct course, according to the company.