Bob Nelsen’s Re­silience, with a mis­sion no less am­bi­tious than rewrit­ing the rules of drug man­u­fac­tur­ing, has raced off to a quick lead with just a year of life un­der its belt. The Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment likes what it sees, and plans to cut a healthy check to boost Re­silience’s Mis­sis­sauga fa­cil­i­ty.

The Cana­di­an Strate­gic In­no­va­tion Fund will spend $163 mil­lion will mod­ern­ize and ex­pand pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty for new tech­nolo­gies such as mR­NA, the key com­po­nent of Pfiz­er/BioN­Tech and Mod­er­na’s vac­cine, at Re­silience’s site. The ex­pan­sion will add 205 new jobs in Mis­sis­sauga at a 136,000-square-foot fa­cil­i­ty that cur­rent­ly pro­vides fill-fin­ish man­u­fac­tur­ing.

Prime Min­is­ter Justin Trudeau and In­no­va­tion Min­is­ter François-Philippe Cham­pagne re­vealed the news in a press con­fer­ence Tues­day.

“The Gov­ern­ment of Cana­da’s top pri­or­i­ty is to pro­tect the health and safe­ty of Cana­di­ans,” Cham­pagne said in a state­ment. “To­day’s con­tri­bu­tion to Re­silience Biotech­nolo­gies Inc. is an­oth­er im­por­tant step to sup­port Cana­da’s lead­er­ship in the life sci­ences sec­tor and to build fu­ture pan­dem­ic pre­pared­ness. These in­vest­ments are al­so cre­at­ing well-pay­ing jobs and help­ing to grow Cana­da’s life sci­ences ecosys­tem as an en­gine for our eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery.”

An April ar­ti­cle in The At­lantic high­light­ed sev­er­al prob­lems that have con­tributed to the vac­cine short­age, with reg­u­la­tions be­ing at the top of the list. The gov­ern­ment has the abil­i­ty to reg­u­late drug prices and lim­its the num­ber of years for patent pro­tec­tion, mak­ing the coun­try a de­sir­able place to cre­ate a drug. There’s al­so a larg­er ap­petite for price-con­trol, as the gov­ern­ment is the largest buy­er of vac­cines.

On­tario has halt­ed ad­min­is­ter­ing As­traZeneca’s vac­cine as of Tues­day, af­ter 12 re­ports of blood clots in Cana­di­an pa­tients, with 3 peo­ple dy­ing. The province is ex­pect­ed to re­ceive an­oth­er 250,000 dos­es this week, the Toron­to Star re­port­ed.

The new fa­cil­i­ty will be able to man­u­fac­ture be­tween 112 mil­lion and 640 mil­lion dos­es of mR­NA vac­cines a year, an in­crease that Cham­pagne says will po­si­tion the coun­try to at­tract com­pa­nies to man­u­fac­ture dos­es both for its own coun­try and for ex­port. The move adds 50 co-op spots for young sci­en­tists to get their foot in the door.

Rahul Singhvi

Re­silience has made a num­ber of moves in its 7-month ex­is­tence. Founder Bob Nelsen was in­spired to cre­ate the start­up while sit­ting at home dur­ing the start of the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic, as there was plen­ty of news about vac­cines but not plan for the pro­duc­tion or sup­ply chain.

In April, his com­pa­ny picked up the Flori­da CD­MO Ol­o­gy Bioser­vices. In Feb­ru­ary, it ac­quired a 310,000 square-foot plant in Boston from Sanofi along with the 136,000 square-foot plant in On­tario. When those moves were made, CEO Rahul Singhvi said the com­pa­ny was just get­ting start­ed on build­ing op­er­a­tions up.

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.

Republican leaders of the House Committee on Energy & Commerce sent a five-page letter yesterday announcing an investigation into the ongoing drug shortages that have rankled the US during the pandemic and the FDA’s response to it.

The letter, signed by Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), explains how shortages have become more common over the past decade, while pointing to a report from the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine finding that drug shortages have been “on the rise” over the past several decades and are lasting longer, with new drug shortages in the US seeing a 30% increase from 2021 to 2022.