The Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment is look­ing to raise the pro­file of the coun­try’s na­tive biotech in­dus­try, and British Co­lum­bia’s Ab­Cellera is the lat­est com­pa­ny to ben­e­fit from the na­tion’s strate­gic in­no­va­tion fund.

Mur­ray Mc­Cutcheon

Ab­Cellera has land­ed a site in Van­cou­ver for a 130,000-square-foot fa­cil­i­ty to help bring the biotech’s an­ti­body ther­a­pies to clin­i­cal tri­als. In April, the com­pa­ny broke ground on a 380,000-square-foot head­quar­ters that will be with­in walk­ing dis­tance of the new man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ty, set to be built on a va­cant two-acre site.

Mur­ray Mc­Cutcheon, the VP of cor­po­rate de­vel­op­ment, said in a call to End­points News that the nov­el­ty of the site in Cana­da, cou­pled with the nat­ur­al beau­ty and the qual­i­ty of life that comes with liv­ing in British Co­lum­bia, will be a huge draw to new em­ploy­ees.

“We’re quite for­tu­nate here on the West Coast here to have great uni­ver­si­ties and have great tal­ent, but so far, we haven’t had a very big biotech ecosys­tem, and we’re work­ing to change that,” COO Véronique Lecault said Wednes­day.

Véronique Lecault

When the pan­dem­ic un­fold­ed, Ab­Cellera was forced to piv­ot quick­ly and went from dis­cov­ery to hu­man clin­i­cal tri­als with­in 90 days for its mon­o­clon­al an­ti­body ther­a­py bam­lanivimab, which was co-de­vel­oped with Eli Lil­ly to treat pa­tients by work­ing against spike pro­tein to re­duce vi­ral repli­ca­tion.

In April though, the FDA re­voked the emer­gency use au­tho­riza­tion for bam­lanivimab when ad­min­is­tered alone, as the in­crease in vari­ants be­came re­sis­tant to the drug and led to an in­crease in treat­ment fail­ure.

Ab­Cellera has dis­cov­ered a sec­ond an­ti­body, LY-CoV1404, that it is de­vel­op­ing with Lil­ly to help ad­dress vari­ants of Covid-19. The an­ti­body en­tered clin­i­cal tri­als in May.

The fa­cil­i­ty is set to be op­er­a­tional by 2024, and will em­ploy an ad­di­tion­al 300 peo­ple over the next few years. When asked, Mc­Cutcheon said that it is not yet clear which an­ti­bod­ies will be man­u­fac­tured at the site since it is still years away from com­ple­tion.

The Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment has thrown  $125.6 mil­lion from its SIF to sup­port the work, in ad­di­tion, to of­fer pre­pared­ness for fu­ture pan­demics.

François-Philippe Cham­pagne

“Al­though the Cana­di­an an­gle is an im­por­tant piece of it, be­cause the gov­ern­ment has pro­vid­ed us an im­por­tant fund­ing com­mit­ment, as a com­pa­ny, our part­ners are glob­al, our so­lu­tions are glob­al and the bor­der is ir­rel­e­vant we will make this avail­able to every­body we work with and ul­ti­mate­ly we think it will help us bring ther­a­pies to pa­tients faster,” Mc­Cutcheon said.

Re­silience, the Bob Nelsen project aimed at the lofty goal of rewrit­ing the rules of drug man­u­fac­tur­ing, al­so re­cent­ly struck a deal with the Cana­di­an Strate­gic In­no­va­tion Fund, which gave the com­pa­ny $163 mil­lion to ex­pand mR­NA pro­duc­tion at the com­pa­ny’s Mis­sis­sauga fa­cil­i­ty. Prime Min­is­ter Justin Trudeau said in a press con­fer­ence that the move was a step to­ward build­ing fu­ture pan­dem­ic pre­pared­ness, and boost­ing its pres­ence in the life sci­ences.

“I am pleased to see Ab­Cellera par­tic­i­pat­ing in our gov­ern­ment’s ef­fort to re­verse a four-decade de­cline in Cana­da’s do­mes­tic ca­pac­i­ty,” min­is­ter of in­no­va­tion, sci­ence and in­dus­try François-Philippe Cham­pagne said. “This is an im­por­tant step to­ward im­prov­ing Cana­da’s pan­dem­ic pre­pared­ness, and a dri­ver for our eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery.”

So­cial im­age: Carl Hansen, Ab­Cellera CEO

The EMA is putting EU member states on alert over the shortage of two drugs that counter heart attacks due to an uptick in demand.

On Friday, the EMA sent out a warning that two Boehringer Ingelheim drugs are experiencing a shortage: Actilyse and Metalyse. The drugs are used as emergency treatments for adults experiencing acute myocardial infarction, or a heart attack, by dissolving blood clots that have formed in the blood vessels.

Fujifilm’s CDMO arm, Fujifilm Diosynth, has been on a roll this month as the company has recently broken ground on a major project in Europe and it appears to be keeping up the momentum.

Fujifilm Diosynth announced that it has kicked off an expansion project for its microbial manufacturing facility at its campus in the town of Billingham, UK, in the northeast of England.

The 20,000 square-foot, £400 million ($435 million) expansion will add clean rooms, purification suites and a packing area along with more space for the manufacturing itself.

Back in April, Amgen said it was encouraged by the solicitor general’s anticipated review of its Supreme Court petition to rehear a Repatha patent case. They’re likely much less optimistic about the outcome now.

Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote in a recent 27-page brief that Amgen’s arguments “lack merit and further review is not warranted.”

The case traces back to a suit filed in 2014 against Sanofi and Regeneron’s Praluent, which ended up beating Amgen’s PCSK9 blockbuster Repatha to market by a month just a year later.