The UK-based con­tract man­u­fac­tur­er Ster­ling Phar­ma So­lu­tions has com­plet­ed a pur­chase that will give it a man­u­fac­tur­ing pres­ence on the oth­er side of the Irish Sea.

Ster­ling closed its ac­qui­si­tion of an ac­tive phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­gre­di­ent (API) plant in the south­ern Irish vil­lage of Ringask­id­dy, Ire­land, that once be­longed to the Swiss phar­ma No­var­tis. The deal, an­nounced in March of last year, will not on­ly give the British CD­MO more ca­pac­i­ty to pro­duce APIs, but al­so in­cludes a sup­ply agree­ment with No­var­tis to con­tin­ue to pro­duce in­gre­di­ents for car­dio­vas­cu­lar, im­munol­o­gy and on­col­o­gy med­i­cines.

An­drew Hen­der­son, the chief in­te­gra­tion of­fi­cer at Ster­ling, said in an email to End­points News that along with the No­var­tis pro­duc­tion, Ster­ling will al­so be look­ing to use the ad­di­tion­al ca­pac­i­ty and build a new pipeline of con­tract de­vel­op­ment and man­u­fac­tur­ing work.

While the fi­nan­cial de­tails of the deal were not dis­closed, Hen­der­son told End­points that the site is a “ben­e­fi­cial lo­ca­tion,” and will com­ple­ment its net­work of man­u­fac­tur­ing sites with­in the UK and the US. Hen­der­son added that 350 No­var­tis em­ploy­ees have joined Ster­ling at the fa­cil­i­ty.

The site sits on 111 acres and is lo­cat­ed near the city of Cork. It in­cludes sev­er­al pro­duc­tion build­ings, with a to­tal ca­pac­i­ty of 175 cu­bic me­ters. The site al­so in­cludes a de­vel­op­ment and sup­port build­ing with 14 de­vel­op­ment and an­a­lyt­i­cal labs.

“The Ringask­id­dy site has clear syn­er­gies with Ster­ling’s oth­er man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ties, and we have spent the last nine months work­ing close­ly with staff to en­sure a smooth in­te­gra­tion in­to our glob­al net­work to pro­vide small mol­e­cule API de­vel­op­ment and man­u­fac­tur­ing ser­vices for cus­tomers across the world in a range of ther­a­peu­tic ar­eas. Strate­gi­cal­ly, the ac­qui­si­tion adds a Eu­ro­pean hub to our net­work, and not on­ly ex­pands our to­tal ca­pac­i­ty and work­force of high­ly skilled ex­perts but adds new ca­pa­bil­i­ties in pep­tide man­u­fac­tur­ing and large-scale chro­matog­ra­phy,” Ster­ling CEO Kevin Cook said in a state­ment.

Ster­ling has been on a bit of an ex­pan­sion dri­ve over the past few years. In 2021, it ac­quired ADC Bio, a com­pa­ny that spe­cial­izes in an­ti­body drug con­ju­gates, snap­ping up ADC’s man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ty in Wales, which was re­brand­ed to be­come part of the Ster­ling net­work.

The Ringask­id­dy fa­cil­i­ty is not the on­ly one where No­var­tis is re­or­ga­niz­ing on the Emer­ald Isle. In Oc­to­ber, it re­vealed plans to cut around 400 jobs at its Dublin cam­pus by the end of 2024. The cuts at the Dublin fa­cil­i­ty are part of a ma­jor re­struc­tur­ing that No­var­tis CEO Vas Narasimhan ini­ti­at­ed back in April, aimed at cut­ting $1 bil­lion in costs and let­ting go of some key ex­ecs, while com­bin­ing the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and on­col­o­gy units un­der one roof.

New York City is investing $20 million in biotech this year in the form of a 50,000-square-foot “innovation space” at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, complete with offices, research laboratories and events and programming space to grow biotech startups and companies.

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Boehringer Ingelheim uncorked some positive results suggesting that Spevigo can help prevent flare-ups in patients with a severe form of psoriasis, months after the drug was approved to treat existing flares.

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The Third Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a previous bankruptcy court decision on Monday, calling for the dismissal of a Chapter 11 filing by J&J’s subsidiary LTL Management.

Faced with more than 38,000 lawsuits alleging its talc-based products caused cancer, J&J spun its talc liabilities into a separate company called LTL Management back in October 2021 and filed for bankruptcy, a controversial move colloquially referred to as a “Texas two-step” bankruptcy. Claimants argued that the strategy is a misuse of the US bankruptcy code — and on Monday, a panel of judges agreed.