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.

It’s not new for Lonza, the Swiss CDMO nearing its quasquicentennial anniversary, to be in the upper echelon of the biotech manufacturing industry.

But 2020 — as it was for many CDMOs — was a special year even by Lonza’s standards. The company inked a deal to produce 1 billion worldwide doses of Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine and tapped pharma vet Pierre-Alain Ruffieux to lead its operations, moves which have allowed Lonza to make a myriad of other deals that will continue to ramp up its global production capacity.

More than five years after Corey Fishman and Michael Dunne dusted sulopenem off Pfizer’s shelves — the second castoff antibiotic they’ve brought out of the pharma giant — and founded Iterum Therapeutics around that single drug, they have lined up a quick shot at approval with priority review from the FDA.

The decision, six months from now, will mark a make-or-break moment for a struggling biotech that has just enough cash to keep the lights on until the third quarter.

Immunocore spent much of 2019 dealing with the fallout of the Neil Woodford scandal, as the former star investor’s fall crashed the biotech’s valuation out of unicorn range. Now it turns out that the company spent 2020 dealing with another internal scandal.

The longtime UK biotech darling disclosed in their IPO filing last week that they had fallen victim to an alleged kickback scheme involving one of their employees. After a whistleblower came forward, they said in their F-1, they spent the summer and spring investigating, finding fraud on the part of an employee and two outside vendors.

Longtime Vertex CEO Jeffrey Leiden is taking on a new role.

Leiden has been appointed chairman of Tmunity’s board of directors, the company announced Monday. The move comes about a year and a half after Leiden announced he’d be stepping down from his position at Vertex.

Vertex saw immense growth under Leiden, leading the company from its exit out of hepatitis C, when cures were moving in, and into cystic fibrosis. The company’s cystic fibrosis triple combo therapy Trikafta is already its best-seller, reaching the distinction just six weeks after launch and recording the strongest first quarter of sales for any drug, per some estimates.