Ar­row­head Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals is get­ting a leg up from Wis­con­sin of­fi­cials on a new build­ing project.

The com­pa­ny has out­lined a set of in­cen­tives that have be­come quite com­mon as states look to com­pete for new man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ties and the jobs they can cre­ate.

Ar­row­head is build­ing a new drug man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ty in Verona, WI, rough­ly 10 miles from Madi­son, that will have 125,000 square foot lab­o­ra­to­ry and of­fice fa­cil­i­ties to sup­port process de­vel­op­ment and an­a­lyt­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ties. It will al­so con­tain 160,000 square feet of man­u­fac­tur­ing space. Ar­row­head is no stranger to the Madi­son area as it cur­rent­ly has op­er­a­tions around in the state’s cap­i­tal.

Ar­row­head was award­ed up to $16 mil­lion in tax in­cre­ment fi­nanc­ing from the city. It will al­so re­ceive up to $2.5 mil­lion in re­fund­able Wis­con­sin state in­come tax cred­its of­fered by the Wis­con­sin Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (WEDC). These tax ben­e­fits are be­ing of­fered as in­cen­tives for Ar­row­head to in­vest in the lo­cal area and po­ten­tial­ly cre­ate new jobs.

The com­ple­tion of the lab and of­fice space is an­tic­i­pat­ed in Q1 2023 with the man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ty ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed in Q4 2024.

The ball start­ed rolling on the project in 2021 when Ar­row­head Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals pur­chased 13 acres of land in Wis­con­sin’s Verona Tech­nol­o­gy Park. Ar­row­head is ex­pect­ed to spend be­tween $200 mil­lion and $250 mil­lion to build the fa­cil­i­ties and cre­ate an es­ti­mat­ed 250 jobs for the area.

“We have had a pro­duc­tive and mu­tu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial re­la­tion­ship with the lo­cal biotech com­mu­ni­ty and broad­er busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty in the greater Madi­son, WI area for many years,” said Christo­pher An­za­lone, Ar­row­head pres­i­dent and CEO.

On the back of the ground­break­ing, Ar­row­head’s stock $AR­WR man­aged to slight­ly in­crease, but its price is still down around 50% year to date as the biotech mar­ket con­tin­ues to face a pow­er­ful bear mar­ket.

Ac­cord­ing to Anaza­lone, the new fa­cil­i­ties will help sup­port the de­vel­op­ment and the com­mer­cial­iza­tion of new med­i­cines that lever­age the nat­ur­al RNAi path­way to tar­get genes in­volved in var­i­ous dis­eases.

For Ar­row­head, RNAi is a ma­jor fo­cus for the com­pa­ny as, in 2020, The com­pa­ny es­tab­lished a part­ner­ship with Take­da tar­get­ing al­pha-1 liv­er dis­ease, dubbed ARO-AAT. The com­pa­ny has al­so li­censed out sev­er­al drugs in its pipeline to ma­jor phar­ma com­pa­nies in­clud­ing he­pati­tis B to J&J and a drug for car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease to Am­gen, among oth­ers.

In 2021, Glax­o­SmithK­line paid $120 mil­lion in up­front cash a to de­vel­op and sell ARO-HSD, Ar­row­head Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals’ RNA in­ter­fer­ence drug tar­get­ing fat­ty liv­er NASH.

The com­pa­ny was forced to scrap its en­tire clin­i­cal pipeline in 2016 fol­low­ing deaths in a non-hu­man pri­mate tox­i­col­o­gy study. The com­pa­ny faced a sim­i­lar is­sue in Ju­ly of 2021 when it paused the Phase I/II tri­al of RNAi cys­tic fi­bro­sis drug ARO-ENaC af­ter a study in rats showed lung in­flam­ma­tion sig­nals.

As the House-passed bill to cap the monthly price of insulin at $35 nationwide makes its way for a Senate vote soon, Sanofi announced Wednesday morning that beginning next month it will cut the monthly price of its insulins for uninsured Americans to $35, down from $99 previously.

The announcement from Sanofi, which allows the uninsured to buy one or multiple Sanofi insulins (Lantus, Insulin Glargine U-100, Toujeo, Admelog, and Apidra) at $35 for a 30-day supply effective July 1, follows House passage (232-193) of the monthly cap in March, with just 12 Republicans voting in favor of the measure.

Indian-based generics manufacturer Aurobindo Pharma has been in the crosshairs of the FDA for several years now, but the company is also attracting attention from regulators within the subcontinent.

According to the Indian business news site Business Standard, a warning letter was sent to the company from the Securities Exchange Board of India, or SEBI.

The letter is related to disclosures made by the company on an ongoing FDA audit of the company’s Unit-1 API facility in Hyderabad, India as well as observations made by the US regulator between 2019 and 2022.

While Massachusetts-based Charles River Laboratories has been on an acquisition spree, they are not against planting their flag. The latest move by the company sees them crossing the pond to establish a manufacturing site in the UK.

The company on Tuesday opened its cell and gene therapy manufacturing center at Bruntwood SciTech’s Alderley Park in Cheshire, United Kingdom. The expansion follows Charles River’s acquisition of Cognate BioServices and Cobra Biologics in 2021 for $875 million. Cognate is a plasmid DNA, viral vector and cell therapy CDMO.

Following some backlash from the American College of Cardiology and patients, Bristol Myers Squibb and Pfizer lowered the price of their blockbuster blood thinner Eliquis, thus ensuring that CVS Caremark would cover the drug after 6 months of it being off the major PBM’s formulary.

“Because we secured lower net costs for patients from negotiations with the drug manufacturer, Eliquis will be added back to our template formularies for the commercial segment effective July 1, 2022, and patient choices will be expanded,” CVS Health said in an emailed statement. “Anti-coagulant therapies are among the non-specialty products where we are seeing the fastest cost increases from drug manufacturers and we will continue to push back on unwarranted price increases.”