Changes are com­ing to As­pen Phar­ma­care’s plant in Gqe­ber­ha, South Africa.

The com­pa­ny will open the largest anes­thet­ics man­u­fac­tur­ing line in the south­ern hemi­sphere at the same site that it fills and pack­ages the J&J Covid-19 vac­cine, the com­pa­ny’s CEO Stephen Saad told re­porters Mon­day.

The ex­pan­sion could gen­er­ate an­oth­er $542 mil­lion in rev­enue a year. In 2018, As­pen start­ed man­u­fac­tur­ing drugs for late-stage can­cer, au­toim­mune ill­ness­es and Parkin­son’s dis­ease. Just last year, it start­ed fill-fin­ish op­er­a­tions for the J&J jab.

“This fa­cil­i­ty will help en­sure no African is ever de­nied these treat­ments like anes­thet­ics and vac­cines again,” Saad said. “We thank J&J for giv­ing us the ca­pa­bil­i­ty to cre­ate our own man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ties. So we’ve been able to pro­duce vac­cines in Africa and now to al­so bring anes­thet­ics home.”

The move will al­low the com­pa­ny to slide in­to vac­cine pro­duc­tion, and shift away from gener­ic med­i­cines. As­pen’s cur­rent­ly en­gaged in talks with J&J to ful­ly man­u­fac­ture the Covid-19 jab, Bloomberg re­ports. It’s cur­rent­ly in the fi­nal stages of the fill and fin­ish deal.

The com­pa­ny al­so will ramp up its Covid-19 ca­pac­i­ty to 1.3 bil­lion dos­es a year by Feb­ru­ary 2024, Saad told Reuters on Mon­day. That would re­quire a tremen­dous amount of ramp up, as the com­pa­ny’s cur­rent out­put is some­where around 250 mil­lion dos­es.

“We have got an ab­solute com­mit­ment to 700 mil­lion dos­es till Feb­ru­ary 2023 … with­in a year af­ter that, we could get (to) 1.3 bil­lion dos­es,” Saad said to Reuters at the open­ing of As­pen’s fa­cil­i­ty at Gqe­ber­ha.

Ebrahim Pa­tel, the min­is­ter of trade and in­dus­try, said that 100% of the vac­cines pro­duced at As­pen’s site will stay in Africa from Sep­tem­ber, on.

The com­pa­ny was a part of some neg­a­tive head­lines in Au­gust, at no fault of its own. De­spite re­ceiv­ing a $200 mil­lion in­vest­ment from Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s ad­min­is­tra­tion to up pro­duc­tion on the con­ti­nent, the New York Times re­port­ed that much of the vac­cines pro­duced at the site were ac­tu­al­ly ex­port­ed to Eu­rope, as J&J cap­i­tal­ized on a stip­u­la­tion in a con­tract that re­quired South Africa to waive its right to ex­port re­stric­tions. All this was hap­pen­ing as Africa had just 2% of its peo­ple vac­ci­nat­ed, com­pared with 60% of all adults in Eu­rope. J&J’s vac­cine is ben­e­fi­cial in Africa, par­tic­u­lar­ly the rur­al parts, be­cause it is a sin­gle shot, mak­ing it eas­i­er for those who have to trav­el long dis­tances to be­come ful­ly in­oc­u­lat­ed.

The African Union has or­dered 400 mil­lion dos­es for its coun­tries, but few have ar­rived so far. South Africa has hand­ed out just 2 mil­lion of its 31 mil­lion dos­es.

The area of Ireland famous for Blarney Castle and its cliffsides along the Atlantic Ocean is seeing Merck KGaA expand its commitment there.

The German drug manufacturer is expanding its membrane and filtration manufacturing capabilities in Ireland. The company will invest approximately €440 million ($470 million) to increase membrane manufacturing capacity in Carrigtwohill, Ireland, and build a new manufacturing facility at Blarney Business Park, in County Cork, Ireland.

As the cases of monkeypox now sit at well over 100 worldwide and have spread to multiple continents, the orders for any type of vaccine against monkeypox are seeing nations and medical bodies looking to get their hands on anything and everything. And now SIGA Technologies seems to be getting in on the action.

According to Euronews, SIGA Technologies, a pharmaceutical company that is focused on providing medical countermeasures to biological and chemical attacks, is now in talks with several European authorities looking to stockpile its antiviral that can counter monkeypox. The drug known as tecovirimat or Tpoxx was approved by the FDA in 2018 as a vaccine for smallpox but was approved by the European Medicines Agency to also act against monkeypox, cowpox and complications from immunization with vaccinia.

Vanda Pharmaceuticals is making a name for itself, at least in terms of suing the FDA.

The DC-headquartered firm on Monday filed its latest suit against the agency, with the company raising concerns over the FDA’s failure to grant a fast track designation for Vanda’s potential chronic digestive disorder drug tradipitant, which is a neurokinin 1 receptor antagonist.

Specifically, Vanda said FDA’s “essential point” in its one-page denial letter on the designation pointed to “the lack of necessary safety data,” which was “inconsistent with the criteria for … Fast Track designation.”

An Ohio-based biotech spinout is garnering even more investment and space even after only being around for about a year.

AmplifyBio, a CRO and R&D biotech, has received a nine-figure investment to expand its facilities to a second location in New Albany, a suburb of the state capital of Columbus.

The company is receiving an investment of around $150 million to establish a new 350,000-square-foot facility. With this investment, the company is also expected to create over 200 new jobs both at its new location and at an existing location in West Jefferson, another Columbus suburb. That location, which has 220,000-square-feet of space for the young biotech, is the headquarters for nonprofit Battelle, which spun out AmplifyBio last year.