In­dia is get­ting a man­u­fac­tur­ing boost that will add the ca­pac­i­ty to pro­duce an­oth­er 1 bil­lion in­jecta­bles.

Re­ci­pharm an­nounced the con­struc­tion of a new fill-fin­ish fa­cil­i­ty in Ut­tarak­hand, near Dehradun, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Sobti fam­i­ly. The de­vel­op­ment is the lat­est move in a part­ner­ship with the fam­i­ly, which be­gan in 2019 af­ter Re­ci­pharm in­vest­ed in Nichep­harm.

The site will up Re­ci­pharm’s ster­ile fill-fin­ish ser­vice to com­ple­ment al­ready ex­ist­ing lo­ca­tions in France, Ger­many and Italy. The project’s next step is to gain au­tho­riza­tion from Eu­ro­pean reg­u­la­tors.

“This is a great mile­stone for our on­go­ing part­ner­ship with the Sobti fam­i­ly,” Re­ci­pharm CEO Marc Funk said in a press re­lease. “From the new fa­cil­i­ty we’ll be able to pro­vide cus­tomers with in­valu­able ac­cess to high qual­i­ty ster­ile fill & fin­ish ca­pac­i­ty, which is in huge de­mand glob­al­ly. A lot of hard work has gone in to en­sur­ing the suc­cess of this project and we’re de­light­ed to see it come to fruition.”

The Sobti fam­i­ly, which is from In­dia, cre­at­ed Nichep­harm Life­sciences in 2019, and it will ini­tial­ly is­sue an 8% eq­ui­ty stake to Re­ci­pharm for an in­vest­ment of near­ly $10.45 mil­lion. Re­ci­pharm has the op­tion to ac­quire an ad­di­tion­al 16% share in Nichep­harm this year.

Ear­li­er in Ju­ly, Re­ci­pharm an­nounced the Mo­roc­can gov­ern­ment would pay $500 mil­lion to es­tab­lish a fill-fin­ish fac­to­ry over the next five years that is pri­mar­i­ly ded­i­cat­ed to man­u­fac­tur­ing African vac­cines. That will be up-and-run­ning by 2023, so long as it stays on sched­ule, and will mir­ror the Monts, France lo­ca­tion.

The Swedish CD­MO got the go-ahead to man­u­fac­ture Mod­er­na’s Covid-19 vac­cine af­ter ap­proval from the EMA’s Com­mit­tee for Hu­man Med­i­cine at the start of Ju­ly, and helped en­sure the time­ly de­liv­ery of Covid-19 vac­cines to Eu­rope.

Nearly a year ago, more than 200 workers at Novartis’ Grimsby, UK, facility were able to hang on to their jobs after the pharma closed a Switzerland site as a part of its workforce restructuring plan. Now, it looks like those employees’ time is up, as the site has been sold, Grimsby Telegraph reported today.

The manufacturing site has been sold to Humber Industrials, a subsidiary of International Process Plants. None of the current staff members will be working with the new owners, however.

Biotech is one of the smartest, best educated industries on the planet. PhDs abound. We’ve had a long enough track record to see a new generation of savvy, experienced execs coming together to run startups.

And in these times, they are being tested as never before.

Biotech is going through quite a rough patch right now. For 2 years, practically anyone with a decent resume and some half-baked ideas on biotech could start a company and get it funded. The pandemic made it easy in many ways to pull off an IPO, with traditional road shows shut down in exchange for a series of quick Zoom meetings. Generalist investors flocked as the numbers raised soared into the stratosphere.

It looks like Warren Buffett is sticking to ice cream and railroads for the moment.

The billionaire CEO of Berkshire Hathaway backed out of major two holdings in the pharma industry, Forexlive first reported, including a $410 million investment in AbbVie and a $324.4 million stake in Bristol Myers Squibb.

The move comes after Berkshire abandoned its Teva shares just last quarter, Bloomberg reported.

Usually reserved for making decisions on drug applications or enforcing what Congress stipulates, the FDA is now dipping its toe into the wild world of congressional politics as it attempts to fix a major court decision that could have a chilling effect on rare disease R&D.

The case in question from last October saw a US appeals court overturn a prior FDA court win, saying that the agency never should’ve approved a rare disease drug because a previously approved but more expensive drug with the same active ingredient has orphan drug exclusivity barring such an approval.

When bluebird bio’s gene therapy to treat beta thalassemia won European approval in 2019, the nearly $2 million per patient price tag for the potential cure seemed like a surmountable hurdle.

Fast forward two years later, and bluebird has withdrawn Zynteglo, the beta thal drug, along with the rest of its gene therapy portfolio from Europe, which the company said is generally unwilling to pay a fair price for the treatment.