Moderna (NSDQ:MRNA) announced today that Laboratorios Farmacéuticos Rovi has agreed to make Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate in its Madrid, Spain facility. The contract for large-scale, commercial fill-finish manufacturing in Spain is but the latest that Moderna has secured as it moves forward with Phase 3 of the clinical trial for its COVID-19 vaccine candidate. Moderna in…
Stevanato Group lauches modular, robotic pharma inspection system with AI
The Stevanto Group (Piombino Dese, Italy) announced today that it is launching a modular, robotic inspection system that incorporates AI with accrued machine learning capabilities. The company boasts that its Vision Robot Unit (VRU) is able to automatically and reliably inspect both cosmetic and particle properties without human intervention. The VRU has a patent-pending design…
U.S. investing $42m to boost BD syringe and needle production
HHS’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority is helping BD expand operations and manufacturing capacity in Nebraska to boost syringe and needle supplies for an eventual COVID-19 vaccine. Becton Dickinson (NYSE:BDX) said today that the total project will cost $70 million, with BARDA providing $42 million. The company expects the new capacity to be online within…
Legacy Pharmaceutical Packaging buys facility to expand third-party logistics
Legacy Pharmaceutical Packaging recently announced that it has bought a 215,000-square-foot open-space facility near its St. Louis area headquarters to support widescale third-party logistics and distribution services. The new facility, announced last week, nearly doubles Legacy’s total footprint to more than 500,000 square feet. The new space allows Legacy Pharmaceutical Packaging to significantly grow its…
Real estate firms tout former Bristol-Myers Squibb facility as an ‘innovation campus’
Lincoln Equities Group and H.I.G. Realty Partners announced today that they’ve acquired the 1.2 million-square-foot life sciences campus that Bristol-Myers Squibb owned outside Princeton, N.J. Brokerage firm JLL is helping the real estate outfits market the 433-acre “Princeton West Innovation Campus” in Hopewell, N.J., to life sciences companies as a secure, multipurpose research and development…
Honeywell unveils glass bottles alternative
Honeywell (NYSE:HON) is touting its new Aclar Edge bottles and vials as a safer alternative to glass packaging for pharmaceutical products. Aclar Edge is meant for oral liquids for human health and sterile injectables for animal health applications. Honeywell said it has created the bottles and vials through its novel and proprietary multi-layer extrusion blow molding…
Sherlock Biosciences announces manufacturing partnership for CRISPR-based COVID-19 test
Sherlock Biosciences announced today that it will collaborate with Integrated DNA Technologies (IDT) to enable large-scale manufacturing of the Sherlock CRISPR SARS-CoV-2 kit for COVID-19 detection. Officials at Cambridge, Mass.–based Sherlock Biosciences think the company’s CRISPR-based diagnostic test, which recently received an FDA emergency use authorization, will increase testing capacity and decreasing time to result…
Merck eyes tiny patches as a vaccine delivery method
Merck has exercised its option to use Vaxxas‘ High Density Microarray Patch (HD-MAP) platform as a delivery platform for a vaccine candidate, the companies announced today. The companies did not disclose what the vaccine candidate is supposed to treat. But Merck this month announced two COVID-19 vaccine development efforts: a collaboration with IAVI and plans…
Thermo Fischer Scientific to boost manufacturing for CSL
Thermo Fischer Scientific announced today that it has inked a strategic partnership with biotechnology company CSL to help better meet the growing demand for biologic therapies. Thermo Fisher will support CSL’s product portfolio through its pharma services network, including drug product development, biologics manufacturing, sterile fill-finish, packaging and clinical trials logistics. Thermo Fisher — through…
Siemens Healthineers to produce 50m antibody tests per month against COVID-19
Siemens Healthineers (ETR: SHL) said today that it has started worldwide shipments of its COVID-19 antibody test, with a goal of producing 50 million tests per month as the pandemic evolves. The German medtech giant boasts that it has 20,000 systems worldwide to run the tests, including what it describes as the largest analyzer installed base in the…