The multinational conglomerate Fujifilm will invest $1.6 billion to improve and ramp up the cell culture manufacturing services of its CDMO subsidiary Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies. Most of the investment will focus on a site in Hillerød, Denmark. A site in College Station, Texas, will also benefit from a funding injection. The investment will increase the…

The robotics firm Wyzo (Ecublens, Switzerland) has announced that it has won two design awards. The first is the Design Award in the Industry & Tools Category from iF while the second is the Best of the Best Award from Red Dot for Industrial Equipment, Product Design and Robotics. “These awards show how important it is to take care of the…

The contract manufacturing firm SMC Ltd. has opened a new pharmaceutical development subsidiary known as Cambridge Pharma in Cambridge Research Park. The Cambridge Pharma facility will include sterile fill-finish offerings, a process development laboratory and an analytical laboratory. The company can fill batches of 100 to 10,000 units. It also will offer process development, scale…

BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company) (NYSE:BDX) has partnered with the private equity firm Frazier Healthcare Partners to acquire Parata Systems, a provider of pharmacy automation solutions. The purchase price of the acquisition is $1.525 billion. Founded in 2006, Parata Systems offers a range of products and services, including medication adherence packaging technology and perpetual inventory…

The Neotame Emprove Essential NF excipient from MilliporeSigma (Burlington, Massachusetts) is a high-intensity sweetener that can be used to mask the bitter flavor of active pharmaceutical ingredients. Neotame Emprove Essential NF is a N-[N-(3,3-dimethylbutyl)-L-alpha-aspartyl]-L-phenylalanine-1-methyl ester. MilliporeSigma notes that the product is a potent, synthetic sweetener with a sugar-like flavor but is between 8,000 and 13,000…

MedTrace Pharma announced the first person scanned in its Rapid-Water-Flow Phase 3 clinical trial, further testing its tech to bring 15 O-water to imaging. The first subject scan took place at Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark, using 15 O-water produced, dosed and injected through MedTrace’s P3 automated delivery system. The clinical trial aims to evaluate…

The German industrial control and automation firm Festo has introduced its DHOP closed-loop smart-pipette for automated, high-speed dispensing systems used for pharmaceutical, biotech and cosmetic R&D. The Esslingen, Germany-based company announced the pipette at the Interphex tradeshow scheduled for May 24-26 in New York City. The DHOP pipette will formally be available in mid-2022. Festo…

Analytical instrumentation specialist Shimadzu has introduced LabSolutions MD software that supports analytical method development for high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The software offers established method scouting functionality and supports automated column and solvent screening. Shimadzu reports that LabSolutions MD offers swift identification of ideal separation conditions using design of experiments (DoE). The company reports that the…

After receiving funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, ProMed Pharma has begun preclinical evaluation of a novel fully resorbable contraceptive implant. The Plymouth, Minnesota–based company imagines that the contraceptive implants could ultimately find use in low- and middle-income (LMIC) settings. The novel implant potentially could offer women 18 months of contraception through the…

The nonprofit organization Center for Inquiry (CFI) is suing Boiron, one of the biggest manufacturers of homeopathic products. In a lawsuit invoking the District of Columbia Consumer Protection Procedures Act, CFI argues that Boiron sells scores of materially identical products composed of sugar pills and powders while claiming that the products treat or cure a…