While Mid­dle­town, Delaware’s main claim to fame was the site lo­ca­tion for the film the Dead Po­ets So­ci­ety, the city will soon play host to a mas­sive man­u­fac­tur­ing out­fit.

WuXi AppTec’s con­tract re­search and man­u­fac­tur­ing sub­sidiary WuXi STA, has bro­ken ground on a 190-acre man­u­fac­tur­ing cam­pus in Mid­dle­town.

Ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny, this site will be WuXi’s sec­ond fa­cil­i­ty in the US, and it will cre­ate around 500 full-time jobs by 2026, but there are plans to kick off op­er­a­tions in 2025.

A re­port from the Delaware Bio­Science As­so­ci­a­tion said WuXi paid $30 mil­lion for the land with the site cost­ing a to­tal of $510 mil­lion. The site is al­so backed by $19 mil­lion in tax­pay­er-fund­ed grants.

The com­pa­ny states that this is the first phase of the new cam­pus. While it did not pro­vide in­for­ma­tion on what ex­act prod­ucts will be man­u­fac­tured once com­plet­ed, the site will be able to pro­vide for­mu­la­tion de­vel­op­ment and clin­i­cal and com­mer­cial drug prod­uct man­u­fac­tur­ing ser­vices for oral and in­jectable prod­ucts. The site will al­so be able to pack­age, la­bel, store and dis­trib­ute ser­vices for clin­i­cal tri­al ma­te­ri­als and com­mer­cial drug prod­ucts.

“WuXi STA con­tin­ues to in­crease our ca­pa­bil­i­ties and ca­pac­i­ties to bet­ter serve our cus­tomers through a more ro­bust and re­li­able sup­ply chain. With our in­te­grat­ed Con­tract Re­search, De­vel­op­ment, and Man­u­fac­tur­ing Or­ga­ni­za­tion (CRD­MO) plat­form and proven qual­i­ty sys­tem, we look for­ward to work­ing with our cus­tomers to swift­ly de­liv­er their in­no­v­a­tive ther­a­pies to mar­ket in or­der to save lives and im­prove health­care for pa­tients,” said WuXi CEO Minzhang Chen in a state­ment.

The com­pa­ny said in an email to End­points News that Delaware was cho­sen be­cause the state has a grow­ing health­care in­dus­try as well as a high­ly trained phar­ma man­u­fac­tur­ing work­force.

While the com­pa­ny al­so did not go in­to de­tails about any fu­ture build­ing phas­es, when the site was an­nounced in 2021, the com­pa­ny said the site could ex­pand to hire more than 1,000 em­ploy­ees, with 600,000 square feet of space in at least three build­ings, in­clud­ing one for drugs, one for ad­min­is­tra­tion, and one for drug sub­stances.

While WuXi finds it­self in good com­pa­ny with com­pa­nies such as As­traZeneca and Charles Riv­er in Delaware, the com­pa­ny has been look­ing to ex­pand rapid­ly across the globe.

This year the com­pa­ny has opened an HPA­PI plant at its Changzhou site in Jiang­su, Chi­na, and two large-scale oligonu­cleotide and pep­tide man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ties at its cam­pus in Changzhou, Chi­na. Last year the com­pa­ny ac­quired Bris­tol My­ers Squibb’s site in Cou­vet, Switzer­land, which spe­cial­izes in com­mer­cial-scale pro­duc­tion of var­i­ous cap­sules and tablet dosage forms.

The mRNA player Moderna is further cementing its presence on the African continent.

Moderna announced on Thursday that it has finalized an agreement with Kenya’s government to partner up and bring an mRNA manufacturing facility to the east African nation. The new facility aims to manufacture up to 500 million doses of vaccines annually. Moderna also said the new facility will have the ability to spike its production capabilities to respond to public health emergencies on the continent or globally.

ViiV Healthcare has teamed up with the UN-backed Medicines Patent Pool and three generic manufacturers to expand access to medicine that can prevent HIV.

ViiV and the Medicines Patent Pool jointly announced Thursday that the MPP signed sub-licensing agreements with Aurobindo, Cipla and Viatris to manufacture generics of a long-acting form of cabotegravir for HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). As a result of the agreement, the manufacturers will be able to develop, manufacture and supply generic versions of cabotegravir LA in 90 countries — subject to regulatory approvals.

Thermo Fisher Scientific is putting down more roots in the Bay Area.

The manufacturer opened the doors to a new cell therapy manufacturing facility next to the University of California-San Francisco Medical Center’s Mission Bay campus and on the university’s campus.

UCSF and Thermo Fisher have had a partnership since 2021, with the new site focusing on manufacturing cell therapeutics for certain cancers, including glioblastoma and multiple myeloma. The new site plans to use Thermo Fisher’s expertise in manufacturing services to help UCSF accelerate the development of cell therapies and eventually get them into the clinic, said Dan Herring, the general manager of cell therapy services at Thermo Fisher, in an interview with Endpoints News.