Two years af­ter its lead­ing asth­ma ther­a­py flopped in a Phase III study, the UK’s Vec­tura switched gears to fo­cus on man­u­fac­tur­ing in­hal­able drugs for oth­er bio­phar­ma com­pa­nies. Now, it’s dou­bling down on that man­u­fac­tur­ing an­gle with a new ex­pan­sion at its UK pro­duc­tion fa­cil­i­ties.

Vec­tura un­veiled this week an ex­pan­sion of its ca­pa­bil­i­ties to han­dle and de­vel­op high­ly po­tent ac­tive phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­gre­di­ents (API) at its head­quar­ters in Chip­pen­ham, Eng­land. The project will in­clude in­stalling six new con­tain­ment iso­la­tors, which will house de­vel­op­ment man­u­fac­tur­ing equip­ment for dis­pens­ing, blend­ing, co-milling, jet-milling, spray-dry­ing and blis­ter-fill pack­ag­ing — turn­ing the fa­cil­i­ty in­to a new­ly-mod­eled prod­uct de­vel­op­ment man­u­fac­tur­ing lab.

Geral­dine Ven­thoye

Geral­dine Ven­thoye, Vec­tura’s CSO and EVP of prod­uct de­vel­op­ment, told End­points News the com­pa­ny was work­ing on a num­ber of in­fra­struc­ture and con­tin­u­ous im­prove­ment projects to strength­en its ca­pac­i­ty as a CD­MO.

“One of them, this con­tain­ment project, means we will be able to safe­ly han­dle po­tent drug sub­stances with few­er time-con­sum­ing re­stric­tions — and work with a greater range of mol­e­cules that could ul­ti­mate­ly help more pa­tients,” Ven­thoye said.

Vec­tura did not share de­tails on the price of the project.

The new fa­cil­i­ty will al­low Vec­tura sci­en­tists to safe­ly han­dle APIs with an oc­cu­pa­tion­al ex­po­sure lim­it as low as 0.1 µg/m3, the com­pa­ny said in a press re­lease. The iso­la­tors will al­low flex­i­ble set­up of equip­ment with­in them, al­low­ing for more flex­i­bil­i­ty in the com­pa­ny’s in­haled-drug de­vel­op­ment projects. In­stal­la­tion and val­i­da­tion of all equip­ment is pro­ject­ed to be fin­ished in the com­ing months.

“We ob­vi­ous­ly can­not pre­dict what op­por­tu­ni­ties and mol­e­cules might come our way, but we will be ready to be able to of­fer cus­tomers this ser­vice very ear­ly in 2021,” Ven­thoye said.

Vec­tura’s shift to­wards drug pro­duc­tion be­gan in 2018 af­ter the com­pa­ny de­cid­ed to ax its whol­ly-owned asth­ma ther­a­py af­ter it failed a piv­otal Phase III study for asth­ma. Re­searchers used a neb­u­liz­er to de­liv­er dos­es of budes­onide to pa­tients, but the pos­i­tive trend line they cit­ed for VR475, the drug reg­i­men on tri­al, nev­er hit sta­tis­ti­cal sig­nif­i­cance against a place­bo.

Vec­tura’s drug de­vel­op­ment part­ners in­clude Hik­ma, No­var­tis, San­doz (a di­vi­sion of No­var­tis AG), Mundiphar­ma, Ky­orin, GSK, Bay­er, Chiesi, Almi­rall, and Tian­jin KingY­ork.

Biotech is one of the smartest, best educated industries on the planet. PhDs abound. We’ve had a long enough track record to see a new generation of savvy, experienced execs coming together to run startups.

And in these times, they are being tested as never before.

Biotech is going through quite a rough patch right now. For 2 years, practically anyone with a decent resume and some half-baked ideas on biotech could start a company and get it funded. The pandemic made it easy in many ways to pull off an IPO, with traditional road shows shut down in exchange for a series of quick Zoom meetings. Generalist investors flocked as the numbers raised soared into the stratosphere.

It seems that smallpox vaccination production is weighing on the mind of the US government. And manufacturer Bavarian Nordic is the latest company to benefit.

Just a few days after Emergent, a company that has made government contracts its lifeblood, acquired the exclusive rights to Tembexa from Chimerix, with a $225 million cash payment and an expected BARDA contract, the agency has offered a contract for smallpox vaccine production.

Nearly a year ago, more than 200 workers at Novartis’ Grimsby, UK, facility were able to hang on to their jobs after the pharma closed a Switzerland site as a part of its workforce restructuring plan. Now, it looks like those employees’ time is up, as the site has been sold, Grimsby Telegraph reported today.

The manufacturing site has been sold to Humber Industrials, a subsidiary of International Process Plants. None of the current staff members will be working with the new owners, however.

While calls to diversify clinical trials have grown louder in recent years — gaining support from federal agencies such as the FDA and NIH — progress has largely stalled, according to a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.

Swaths of patients in racial and ethnic minority groups, as well as LGBTQIA+, pregnant and older adult populations continue to be left out of clinical trials. While some advances have been made in the last 30 years — women now account for roughly half of clinical trial participants — growth in other areas remains stagnant, according to the report, which was mandated by Congress and sponsored by the NIH.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee on Wednesday offered a rare show of bipartisan support for a bill that would provide the FDA with user fees for the next five years.

The committee voted 55-0 to advance the quinquennial user fee bill to the full House floor, which if approved, will allow the FDA to use biopharma funds to hire new reviewers, and hit new marks as outlined in the user fee deals that the FDA and biopharma companies forged over the past several years.