In Sep­tem­ber 2021, Ther­mo Fish­er Sci­en­tif­ic an­nounced plans to ex­pand its sin­gle-use man­u­fac­tur­ing foot­print across the globe us­ing $650 mil­lion, start­ing with a new site in Nashville that would more than dou­ble its ca­pac­i­ty.

On Wednes­day, the com­pa­ny cel­e­brat­ed the open­ing of a $44 mil­lion fa­cil­i­ty in Og­den, Utah, that will man­u­fac­ture high­ly cus­tomiz­able bio­process con­tain­er sys­tems.

Mitch Kennedy

Known as BPCs, they’re used to trans­port and store liq­uids that are crit­i­cal parts of bi­o­log­ics, vac­cines and cell and gene ther­a­pies. The site will be 55,000-square-feet and has hired 300 em­ploy­ees. An­oth­er 450 peo­ple in the greater-Salt Lake City area could be hired for roles in safe­ty, qual­i­ty, man­u­fac­tur­ing, en­gi­neer­ing and hu­man re­sources.

Mitch Kennedy, the pres­i­dent of Ther­mo’s sin­gle-use tech­nolo­gies, said in a state­ment:

The Og­den fa­cil­i­ty fur­ther strength­ens our glob­al man­u­fac­tur­ing net­work, which has been grow­ing to meet in­creas­ing de­mand for sin­gle-use con­sum­ables and crit­i­cal raw ma­te­ri­als,” This new fa­cil­i­ty ex­pands our pres­ence in Utah and lo­cat­ing here gives us the abil­i­ty to work close­ly with our Lo­gan site, pro­vid­ing ac­cess to a tal­ent­ed work­force that is ide­al for man­u­fac­tur­ing the high­ly com­plex and cus­tomized so­lu­tions we pro­vide our cus­tomers.

It is the third Ther­mo Fish­er man­u­fac­tur­ing site in Utah. Lo­ca­tions in South Jor­dan and Lo­gan are all with­in a 90-mile dri­ve of each oth­er.

Sin­gle-use tech’s pop­u­lar­i­ty has grown near­ly 30% in the past year, large­ly due to the ease it pro­vides in man­u­fac­tur­ing batch­es at a high rate. The biore­ac­tors elim­i­nate the need for clean­ing chem­i­cals that are used to en­sure the pu­rifi­ca­tion of each drug batch and save time need­ed to clean the biore­ac­tors in be­tween batch­es. It cuts down on the risk of con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, and the amount of wa­ter that man­u­fac­tur­ers use.

“An in­te­gral part of Utah’s biotech com­mu­ni­ty, Ther­mo Fish­er has had a pos­i­tive im­pact on Utah’s econ­o­my, pro­vid­ing sev­er­al thou­sand jobs to Utahns around the state,” Utah Sen. Mitt Rom­ney  said in a state­ment. “(Ther­mo Fish­er) al­so has played a crit­i­cal role in our coun­try’s fight against the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic by help­ing phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies pro­duce ther­a­peu­tics and vac­cines.”

Ther­mo Fish­er al­so in­vest­ed $40 mil­lion in a Millers­burg, PA site that helped more than 20 dif­fer­ent phar­mas since the start of the pan­dem­ic back in Feb­ru­ary.

Eli Lilly has succeeded in its attempt to get the first non-covalent version of Bruton’s tyrosine kinase, or BTK, inhibitors to market, pushing it past rival Merck.

The FDA gave an accelerated nod to Lilly’s daily oral med, to be sold as Jaypirca, for patients with relapsed or refractory mantle cell lymphoma.

The agency’s green light, disclosed by the Indianapolis Big Pharma on Friday afternoon, catapults Lilly into a field dominated by covalent BTK inhibitors, which includes AbbVie and Johnson & Johnson’s Imbruvica, AstraZeneca’s Calquence and BeiGene’s Brukinsa.

The FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) voted unanimously in favor of “harmonizing” Covid vaccine compositions, meaning all current vaccine recipients would receive a bivalent vaccine, regardless of whether they’ve gotten their primary series.

The vote marks an effort to clear up confusion around varying formulations and dosing schedules for current primary series and booster vaccines, as well as “get closer to the strains that are circulating,” according to committee member Paul Offit, professor of pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

The CDMO arm of one of South Korea’s largest conglomerates has posted its year-end results and plans for 2023, which include new construction.

Samsung Biologics netted north of KRW 3 trillion ($2.4 billion) in 2022 revenue and an operating profit of KRW 983.6 billion ($799 million), which the company touted on Friday as “record-high earnings.” The revenue boost was 55% compared to 2021.

The FDA hasn’t detected any potential safety signals, including for stroke, in people aged 65 years and older who have received Pfizer’s bivalent Covid booster, one senior official told members of the agency’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) on Thursday.

The update comes as the FDA and CDC investigate a “preliminary signal” that may indicate an increased risk of ischemic stroke in older Americans who received Pfizer’s updated shot.

The FDA has stopped use of another drug as a result of the new coronavirus variants. On Thursday, the agency announced that AstraZeneca’s antibody combo Evusheld, which was an important prevention option for many immunocompromised people and others, is no longer authorized.

The FDA said it made its decision based on the fact that Evusheld works on fewer than 10% of circulating variants.

Evusheld was initially given emergency authorization at the end of 2021. However, as Omicron emerged, so did studies that showed Evusheld might not work against the dominant Omicron strain. In October, the FDA warned healthcare providers that Evusheld was useless against the Omicron subvariant BA.4.6. It followed that up with another announcement earlier this month that it did not think Evusheld would work against the latest Omicron subvariant XBB.1.5.

Novartis’ sickle cell drug, approved in 2019 and branded as Adakveo, has failed an ongoing Phase III, according to preliminary results.

The Swiss pharma giant unveiled early data from the ongoing STAND Phase III study on Friday, saying that crizanlizumab showed no statistically significant difference between the drug at two different dose levels compared to placebo in annualized rates of vaso-occlusive crises that lead to a healthcare visit over the first year since being randomized into the trial.