Sam­sung Bi­o­log­ics has en­tered an agree­ment with biotech Green­Light Bio­Sciences to man­u­fac­ture its mR­NA Covid-19 vac­cine at com­mer­cial scale, the two com­pa­nies an­nounced.

Sam­sung Bi­o­log­ics, one of the fastest grow­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers in the world right now, will use its vac­cine man­u­fac­tur­ing ex­per­tise to help pa­tients in low­er-in­come coun­tries, CEO John Rim said in a press re­lease. This will help ex­pand their ca­pa­bil­i­ties from drug sub­stance to asep­tic fill-fin­ish and all the way to com­mer­cial re­lease from one site.

“At this time of ur­gent glob­al de­mand, we will strive for seam­less ser­vice across our bio­man­u­fac­tur­ing net­work to fight the COVID pan­dem­ic and in turn, help make progress to­wards Ko­rea’s vac­cine hub goal,” he said in a press re­lease.

Sam­sung’s Song­do fa­cil­i­ty will be ready for cGMP op­er­a­tions in ear­ly 2022, the com­pa­ny said. It added drug sub­stance ca­pa­bil­i­ties to the site ear­li­er this year, in an at­tempt to be proac­tive in ac­com­mo­dat­ing clients’ needs.

In Au­gust, Green­light re­verse-merged its way on­to the Nas­daq, land­ing a $1.5 bil­lion val­u­a­tion af­ter merg­ing with the SPAC En­vi­ron­men­tal Im­pact Ac­qui­si­tion Corp., which is backed by Canac­cord Ge­nu­ity Group and Hud­son Bay Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment. That merg­er land­ed the com­pa­ny $207 mil­lion and $105 mil­lion in PIPE fi­nanc­ing.

The com­pa­ny was found­ed in 2008 to use its mR­NA tech­nol­o­gy to pro­tect both hu­mans and agri­cul­ture, in­clud­ing hon­ey­bees and crops. It was vir­tu­al­ly un­known be­fore the merg­er. Now, the com­pa­ny is look­ing to set up a blue­print for vac­ci­nat­ing the world from Covid-19, and hopes to do so through im­proved mR­NA man­u­fac­tur­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties. It’s been work­ing on sea­son­al flu and sick­le cell dis­ease vac­cines as well, but it got its start while try­ing to shake up the pes­ti­cides mar­ket for in­dus­tri­al agri­cul­ture.

“There is an ur­gent need to de­vel­op vac­cines for the whole world,” Green­Light CEO An­drey Zarur said in a press re­lease. “Our vac­cine tri­al will open the way to make vac­cines that are avail­able to every­body, not just cit­i­zens of de­vel­oped coun­tries.”

There are cur­rent­ly three plants at the Sam­sung Song­do cam­pus. A fourth is on the way, and the CD­MO just got ap­proved to build a fifth in No­vem­ber.

Sam­sung will fin­ish the $259 mil­lion site on 32,808-square-feet of land in the city, which comes on the heels of its newest cell line, which launched in Au­gust 2020. It’s al­so in talks to ac­quire more land to de­vel­op a sec­ond bio com­plex. This, and all of Sam­sung’s oth­er ex­pan­sions, come on the heels of a 64% in­crease in sales from last year to $375 mil­lion, large­ly thanks to an in­creased de­mand for CD­MO ser­vices.

A pre­vi­ous ver­sion of this sto­ry stat­ed that Green­Light was based in South Ko­rea. It is based out of Boston, MA.

89bio said its drug was better than placebo at lessening fibrosis without worsening nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, or NASH, in two of three dose groups.

The San Francisco biotech said it thinks the Phase IIb data pave the way for a potential Phase III, following in the footsteps of another biotech in its drug class, Akero Therapeutics. To fund a late-stage study, CEO Rohan Palekar told Endpoints News 89bio “would need to raise additional capital,” with the company having about $188 million at the end of last year.