Nippon Shokubai has concluded a licence agreement with its Japanese compatriot and affiliate company, Rena Therapeutics, to make and sell heteroduplex oligonucleotide (HDO) as a research reagent to industry and academia in all countries where it is covered by patents. Rena has existing licences with Ionis Pharmaceuticals and Takeda Pharmaceutical.
Piramal Pharma Solutions has begun production of initial batches of APIs in new reactor suites at its facility in Riverview, Michigan. This, the company said, represent the first in a three-step process for the development and manufacturing of Phase II clinical trial materials. As part of the programme, technicians are scaling up material from 10-15 kg to 75-80 kg.
Lonza is to expand its Early Development Services (EDS) offering into North America with a new, laboratory in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Covering nearly 1,600 m2, this will begin operations in May. No details were given on the expenditure involved.
Like the company’s other EDS lab in Cambridge, UK, the new lab will offer early in silico non-GMP protein expression and in vitro immunosafety assessment services. These will mainly be delivered to the preclinical stage small- to mid-sized biotechs around the Boston area.
Croda International has bought Solus Biotech from Korea’s Solus Advanced Materials for about $277 million, subject to regulatory approval. Solus Biotech makes biotechnology-derived beauty actives, notably naturally derived powder ceramides and GMP phospholipids for both pharmaceutical and cosmetic applications. Both are high-growth markets, with the number of new personal care products containing ceramides doubling over the last five years.
French CDMO Seqens has opened its $5 million ‘Seqens Boston R&D Center’ in Devens, Massachusetts, in place of an older one. Covering 14,00 m2, this will be the North American flagship for its ten-strong global network of R&D centres, helping to take projects through all the stages of development to commercialisation.
CordenPharma has signed a multi-year agreement for the contract manufacture of a large-volume launch peptide at its former Roche facility in Boulder, Colorado. This will begin in 2023 and will potentially be worth about $1 billion, depending on actual production levels required. The customer has not been named and no further details are being disclosed.
In response to an increasing number of projects, notably in oncology, Indian CRDMO Sai Life Sciences, has opened a 1,485 m2 high potency API (HPAPI) facility at its cGMP API campus in Bidar. This follows on from the opening of an HPAPI development facility at the Hyderabad R&D campus.
The company said that this expands its expertise “across HPAPI development and manufacturing, providing its customers with a streamlined pathway for NCE development”. It will now be able to handle all aspects of the product life cycle.
