Deals, Development and Manufacturing

Vector Laboratories has completed a $124 million cash buyout backed by Thompson Street Capital Partners and will begin an acquisition strategy to expand protein detection capabilities.

Moderna announced a collaboration to develop a new mRNA therapeutic for Crigler-Najjar Syndrome Type 1 at no cost to patients.

The US government has granted Thermo Fisher Scientific a $192.5 million contract that the company will use to expand domestic manufacturing for pipette tips.

Aadi Bioscience has closed its previously announced merger with Aerpio Pharmaceuticals and a concurrent $155-million PIPE investment.

Insilico Biotechnology has joined the Inno4vac project—an innovative European public-private partnership aimed at accelerating vaccine R&D timelines.

The University of Southern California and Amgen have teamed up to provide researchers access to two of Thermo Fisher Scientific’s cryo-EM instruments.

Eli Lilly and Company and industry partners, including Ziath, are focused on speeding up the drug discovery process with a fully automated lab.

BioMed X has partnered with Janssen to start two new research programs for autoimmune diseases and drug delivery.

Pfizer’s proposed $2.26-billion acquisition of Trillium Therapeutics will add next-generation hematology-targeted immuno-therapeutics to its oncology pipeline.

Merck KGaA has partnered with Telix Pharmaceuticals to conduct combination clinical studies for cancer therapy.

The collaboration will focus on the interactions between WTX-124 indukine and KEYTRUDA (pembrolizumab).

Lykan Bioscience and Vineti will combine their capabilities to streamline process development and manufacturing to move cell therapies through clinical phases to commercialization.

A collaboration between Aldevron and Ginkgo Bioworks has resulted in a manufacturing enhancement that can improve production of an enzyme used for mRNA therapeutics.

Lonza and Sheba Medical Center have successfully dosed four patients with a CD19 autologous CAR-T cell therapy using Lonza’s Cocoon automated manufacturing platform.

Moderna will build an mRNA vaccine manufacturing facility in Canada to provide access to domestically manufactured vaccines against respiratory viruses.

AGC Biologics has acquired Novartis’ Longmont, Colorado, manufacturing facility for the commercial production of cell and gene therapies.

BeiGene plans to build a new campus for R&D and commercial-scale biopharmaceutical manufacturing in Hopewell, NJ.

Nanoform and Boehringer Ingelheim have executed a master services agreement in relation to pre-clinical development projects.

A research collaboration will combine Imugene’s oncolytic virus technology with Celularity’s allogeneic CAR T-cell therapy.

The European Commission has entered into a supply agreement with GlaxoSmithKline and Vir Biotechnology for up to 220,000 doses of sotrovimab, an investigational mAb for treating COVID-19.

ERS Genomics and Japan SLC have signed a non-exclusive license agreement, allowing Japan SLC access to ERS Genomics’ CRISPR/Cas9 patent portfolio.

Byondis and Glycotope have formed an agreement to discover and develop antibodies that target specific glyco-epitopes.

Cytiva and Pall reinforce recent expansion efforts with a $1.5-billion dollar investment in new manufacturing facilities.

Meissa Vaccines’s MV-014-212, an intranasal recombinant live attenuated COVID-19 vaccine, induced mucosal and systemic antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 and two variants of concern.

Catalent commences the first phase of a $100-million expansion program Anagni site to increase its manufacturing capabilities for biologics drug substance.

Samsung Biologics and Kineta have entered into a strategic partnership for drug product manufacturing services and to support an IND filing of a novel antibody therapeutic.

BioNTech will acquire a TCR cell therapy R&D platform as well as a manufacturing facility in Gaithersburg, Md., from Kite, a Gilead company.

Cellares has entered into a strategic relationship with Poseida Therapeutics to advance a closed, automated, and scalable cell therapy manufacturing system.

Pall has secured a manufacturing contract with Exothera for the suspension-based manufacture of gene therapies and viral vector-based vaccines.

Aptamer Group has signed a contract with a global pharmaceutical company to use Optimers to support innovative vaccine development for neurodegenerative disease.