Amidst a hail of in­vest­ments com­ing from South Ko­re­an con­glom­er­ates in­to biotech, in­clud­ing Lotte and Sam­sung, SK is look­ing to get in on the ac­tion.

SK Pharmte­co, a CD­MO and sub­sidiary of the sec­ond-largest con­glom­er­ate in South Ko­rea, is in­vest­ing $35 mil­lion to ex­pand SK’s phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing plant in the Dublin sub­urb of Swords, Ire­land, in­clud­ing a new build­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to SK, the ex­pan­sion project will pro­vide an in­crease in the site’s man­u­fac­tur­ing ca­pac­i­ty and ca­pa­bil­i­ties, com­ing on­line some­time in 2024.

The first phase of the project will in­clude a new man­u­fac­tur­ing build­ing, which will aim to in­crease re­ac­tor vol­ume ca­pac­i­ty. The new build­ing will al­so con­tain fil­tra­tion and dry­ing equip­ment, as­so­ci­at­ed util­i­ties and the ca­pa­bil­i­ty for ad­di­tion­al man­u­fac­tur­ing lines and tech­nolo­gies in fu­ture phas­es of the project.

The ex­pan­sion will hap­pen over two phas­es, with ad­di­tion­al fund­ing for sub­se­quent phas­es. On com­ple­tion, the ex­pan­sion will re­sult in an over­all 50% in­crease in ca­pac­i­ty at the Swords cam­pus.

“With sub­stan­tial growth in our busi­ness base, this ex­pan­sion sup­ports SK biotek Ire­land’s po­si­tion as a key con­trib­u­tor to SKPT’s EU and world­wide busi­ness,” said Joyce Fitzhar­ris, pres­i­dent of SK biotek Ire­land, in a state­ment.  The new plant will be lo­cat­ed on the foot­print of a de­com­mis­sioned pro­duc­tion build­ing on-site, with­in prox­im­i­ty to SK’s oth­er site fa­cil­i­ties.

This is the sec­ond ma­jor ex­pan­sion project SK has em­barked on. In 2020, the Swords Cam­pus com­plet­ed a $30 mil­lion re­ac­tor ca­pac­i­ty ex­pan­sion.

The cam­pus has been around for 60 years as a small mol­e­cule API man­u­fac­tur­er, pro­duc­ing on­col­o­gy and car­di­ol­o­gy treat­ments.

This comes at a time not on­ly when oth­er com­pa­nies are look­ing to build out or ex­pand on the Emer­ald Isle, but as SK is mak­ing more in­vest­ments in biotech.

Ear­li­er this year, SK said it will in­vest $350 mil­lion in­to the Cen­ter for Break­through Med­i­cines, with plans to add 2,000 em­ploy­ees as part of a re­dux at the CD­MO’s King of Prus­sia, PA, fa­cil­i­ty.

President Joe Biden made clear in his “finish the job” State of the Union address last night that one of those jobs to be finished is insulin prices.

Biden’s push again to tackle insulin prices, after Republicans rebuffed the idea last summer and just after Biden won Medicare drug price negotiations/caps via the Inflation Reduction Act, shows how heavily he’s leaning into this work.

Six weeks into his new role at the helm of Teva Pharmaceutical, Richard Francis said it’s time to “get back to growth,” starting with a good look at the company’s priorities.

The chief executive has kicked off a strategic review, he announced during Teva’s quarterly call, which will continue over the next several months and produce results sometime in the middle of 2023. That means some pipeline cuts may be in store, he told Endpoints News, while declining to offer much more detail.

FDA Commissioner Rob Califf joined the heads of the CDC and NIH in the hot seat today before a key House subcommittee, explaining that there needs to be a much faster, more coordinated way to oversee vaccine safety, and that foreign biopharma inspections, halted for years due to the pandemic, are slowly ramping up again.

Califf, who stressed to the House Energy and Commerce’s Subcommittee on Health that the CDC also needs better data, made clear that the FDA’s ability to monitor the safety of vaccines “would also benefit greatly by a coordinated federal public health data reporting authority.”