Just days af­ter an­nounc­ing wide-rang­ing ex­pan­sions at four fa­cil­i­ties in the US and Eu­rope, man­u­fac­tur­ing gi­ant Ther­mo Fish­er isn’t slow­ing down. Aim­ing to ramp up its clin­i­cal sup­ply chain of­fer­ings — par­tic­u­lar­ly to aid the Covid-19 re­sponse ef­fort — the CD­MO is spread­ing out in Ger­many with two new fa­cil­i­ties.

Ther­mo has two new fa­cil­i­ties in Rhe­in­felden and Weil am Rhein, Ger­many, go­ing on­line this month and next, re­spec­tive­ly. Like the four re­cent­ly an­nounced site ex­pan­sions, Ther­mo is keep­ing the cost close to the chest.

The new fa­cil­i­ties, the com­pa­ny said, will bring “much-need­ed clin­i­cal sup­ply chain con­ti­nu­ity,” name­ly in spe­cial­ized cold-chain and cryo­genic ex­per­tise across Eu­rope and glob­al­ly. That fo­cus, com­bined with last week’s an­nounced ex­pan­sions fo­cused in part on vac­cine de­vel­op­ment ca­pa­bil­i­ties, un­der­scores Ther­mo’s ever-grow­ing mar­ket for vi­able and ster­ile vac­cine pro­duc­tion, even out­side of the cur­rent break­neck ef­forts to pro­duce a Covid-19 vac­cine.

Ther­mo’s Rhe­in­felden site, open­ing this month, con­sists of an 86,000-square-foot fa­cil­i­ty that will in­crease the com­pa­ny’s foot­print for sec­ondary pack­ag­ing, stor­age, lo­gis­tics and dis­tri­b­u­tion of clin­i­cal sup­plies to in­ves­ti­ga­tor sites across Eu­rope, the com­pa­ny said in a news re­lease.

A 9,600-square-foot cry­ocen­ter high­lights the Weil am Rhein fa­cil­i­ty and will al­low for spe­cial­ized ul­tra-low-tem­per­a­ture, cryo­genic stor­age and cold-chain ex­per­tise for clin­i­cal-sup­ply chain needs for cell and gene ther­a­pies, in­clud­ing Covid-19 vac­cine can­di­dates, Ther­mo said. The site will fea­ture -80 de­gree Cel­sius freez­ers, liq­uid ni­tro­gen cryo­genic stor­age tanks and walk-in 2-8 de­grees Cel­sius and -20 de­grees Cel­sius cold stor­age tech­nol­o­gy. That fa­cil­i­ty is set to open in Jan­u­ary.

The Mass­a­chu­setts com­pa­ny late last week un­veiled ex­pan­sion projects at its fa­cil­i­ties in Greenville, NC; Fer­enti­no and Mon­za, Italy; and Swin­don, Eng­land, to widen the range of op­tions avail­able to its cus­tomers, sig­nal­ing a suc­cess­ful run for the com­pa­ny in a high-paced year for con­tract man­u­fac­tur­ers.

In ad­di­tion to the four pro­duc­tion site ex­pan­sions and the new sup­ply-chain ad­di­tions, Ther­mo al­so re­cent­ly an­nounced an ex­pan­sion in Sin­ga­pore that in­cludes a high-speed ster­ile line for live-virus fill­ing. The com­pa­ny al­so agreed to a joint ven­ture with In­no­force to build a new phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal ser­vices fa­cil­i­ty in Hangzhou, Chi­na that fo­cus­es on in­te­grat­ed bi­o­log­ics drug sub­stance and ster­ile drug prod­uct de­vel­op­ment and man­u­fac­tur­ing.

Both of those sites are ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed in 2022.

“These fa­cil­i­ties, com­bined with our es­tab­lished reg­u­la­to­ry ex­per­tise, will give cus­tomers the con­ti­nu­ity and in-re­gion ca­pa­bil­i­ties to sup­port clin­i­cal tri­als across mul­ti­ple ther­a­py ar­eas,” said Mike Shafer, Ther­mo Fish­er’s SVP and pres­i­dent of phar­ma ser­vices. “Ul­ti­mate­ly, we are en­abling our cus­tomers to make the world health­i­er by bring­ing new med­i­cines to pa­tients with ex­cep­tion­al speed, ef­fi­cien­cy and qual­i­ty.”

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is trying so hard to politicize the FDA and demonize the federal government that he entered into an alternate universe on Monday evening in describing a recent FDA action to restrict the use of two monoclonal antibody, or mAb, treatments for Covid-19 that don’t work against Omicron.

Without further ado, let’s break down his statement from last night, line by line, adjective by adjective.

Bristol Myers Squibb recently joined 11 of its peer pharma companies in limiting how many contract pharmacies can access certain drugs discounted by a federal program known as 340B.

Bristol Myers is just the latest in a series of high-profile pharma companies moving in their own direction as the Biden administration’s Health Resources and Services Administration struggles to rein in the drug discount program for the neediest Americans.

Amgen wanted to know how people with asthma really felt about daily life with the disease. So it bought a promoted tweet on Twitter noting the not-so-simple realities of life with asthma and ended the post with a #DearAsthma hashtag, a megaphone emoji and a re-tweet button.

That was just over one week ago and the responses haven’t stopped. More than 7,000 posts so far on Twitter replied to #DearAsthma to detail struggles of daily life, expressing humor, frustration and sometimes anger. More than a few f-bombs have been typed or gif-ed in reply to communicate just how much many people “hate” the disease.