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It’s not a sto­ry you hear every day: A biotech com­pa­ny that doesn’t use its plat­form to de­vel­op ther­a­peu­tics? De­spite some raised eye­brows ear­ly on, Emeryville, CA-based Zymer­gen has con­vinced in­vestors that its plan to dis­rupt in­dus­tri­al man­u­fac­tur­ing is worth the bet and now it’s priced an eye-pop­ping IPO to take its mis­sion to the next lev­el.

Syn­thet­ic bi­ol­o­gy firm Zymer­gen late Wednes­day priced its 16.13 mil­lion shares at $31, good for a pub­lic of­fer­ing in the range of $500 mil­lion, which would put the com­pa­ny in rar­i­fied air along with Sana Biotech­nol­o­gy as biotech com­pa­nies with half-bil­lion-dol­lar or more IPOs this year, ac­cord­ing to End­points News’ IPO track­er.

The up­sized pric­ing — Zymer­gen ini­tial­ly pen­ciled in a $100 mil­lion cash raise in its S-1 fil­ing last month  — puts Zymer­gen on track to con­tin­ue de­vel­op­ing its de­sign­er mol­e­cules it plans to use to dis­rupt a $3 tril­lion in­dus­tri­al man­u­fac­tur­ing mar­ket with ap­pli­ca­tions as far and wide as con­sumer care, agri­cul­ture and elec­tron­ics.

The com­pa­ny plans to get there by us­ing a process it calls “bio­fac­tur­ing,” us­ing ge­net­i­cal­ly en­gi­neered mol­e­cules to pro­duce in­dus­tri­al-grade prod­ucts with­out the need for tox­ic chem­i­cals of­ten used in the process or ex­pen­sive in­fra­struc­ture. All told, the com­pa­ny thinks it can cut costs by about 90% across the in­dus­try and pro­duce the same ma­te­ri­als in half the time.

It’s a fo­cus that has of­ten not been re­ward­ed among biotech in­vestors look­ing for a clear path to ther­a­pies, but Zymer­gen be­lieves it’s found its own huge un­met need — and the case keeps on flow­ing in. The $500 mil­lion cash raise comes on the heels of a $400 mil­lion Se­ries C back in 2018 and a $300 mil­lion raise in Sep­tem­ber.

All told, the com­pa­ny has raised some­where in the ball­park of $1.375 bil­lion since its ini­tial seed round way back in 2014.

While the com­pa­ny has broad am­bi­tions for its pipeline, it has just one prod­uct on the mar­ket: Hya­line, a high-qual­i­ty op­ti­cal film used in elec­tron­ics. Mean­while, the biotech is pur­su­ing can­di­dates across a trio of elec­tron­ics, agri­cul­ture and con­sumer care. Those ar­eas alone, it be­lieves, of­fer a mar­ket op­por­tu­ni­ty of about $1.2 tril­lion.

Zymer­gen plans a slate of roll­outs in those mar­kets in 2022 and 2023 and will use Hya­line as its ca­nary in the coal mine in terms of con­sumer in­ter­est. If all goes to plan, Zymer­gen thinks its bio­fac­tur­ing mod­el could prove dis­rup­tive across a range of in­dus­tries, po­ten­tial­ly crack­ing open its lofty $3 tril­lion mar­ket goals.

“Our pipeline of prod­ucts has been de­signed with rapid mar­ket adop­tion in mind,” the com­pa­ny said in its prospec­tus. “In ad­di­tion, these prod­ucts demon­strate our bio­fac­tur­ing plat­form’s abil­i­ty to de­vel­op com­mer­cial­ly rel­e­vant prod­ucts across mul­ti­ple ma­jor dis­tinct chem­i­cal class­es.”

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.”