NEWS AND VIEWS FROM THE PHARMACEUTICAL FINE CHEMICAL AND CUSTOM MANUFACTURING SECTOR

Monday 28 February 2011

Fujifilm acquires Merck Biomanufacturing Network

Fujifilm has acquired Merck's Biomanufacturing network for $490m. The network consists of the former Avecia facility in Billingham, UK, and Diosynth RTP in Research Triangle Park, NC. Merck has committed to certain continued development and manufacturing activities with Fujifilm.
Bloomberg

Angel Biotechnology made its first pre-tax profit of £0.19m on revenues of £2.95m during 2010

Proactive Investors

Samsung to establish biomanufacturing jv with Quintiles

Samsung and Qunitiles have established a joint venture to provide biopharmaceutical contract manufacturing services in South Korea. Samsung will own 90% of the joint venture company and Quintiles 10%. The jv company will construct its biopharmaceutical manufacturing plant in the Incheon Free Economic Zone in South Korea and be equipped with cutting-edge technologies and 30,000L of mammalian cell culture bioreactor capacity. Groundbreaking is expected in the first half of 2011 and full-scale operation is expected to commence in April 2013.
Bloomberg Business Week

David Anton has been promoted to chief technology officer and senior vice president, process development and manufacturing at Codexis

Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal

Wednesday 23 February 2011

Carbogen Amcis to restructure

Carbogen Amcis plans to restructure its three sites in Sqitzerland. Following the restructuring, the Aarau site will focus more strongly on development; the Hunzenschwil site on the pilot production of early phase projects and the Bubendorf site on large-volume production and the manufacturing of highly active agents. The company said that 60 of its 350 staff will be made redundant.
Carbogen Amcis

Viropro has acquired Alpha Biologics for $21m

Business Weekly

An affiliate of Sun European Partners has acquired NextPharma Technologies

PharmaBiz

Monday 21 February 2011

Alphora to invest $4m

Alphora is investing $4m during 2011 expanding its facilities and capabilities for API technology development. The company said the expansion is to meet growing demand from customers. The company, which recently increased its R&D capacity by 50% by securing new research facilities, is adding isolation technology for its high potency API development services and will add a fourth cGMP kilo lab.
Contract Pharma

Thursday 17 February 2011

Pfenex links with Boehringer Ingelheim

Pfenex will use its Pfenex Expression Technology to engineer production strains and processes for Boehringer Ingelheim's proprietary molecules, and molecules from Boehringer Ingelheim's contract manufacturing customers. The companies said the partnership will enable preclinical and clinical development to progress much more quickly and efficiently.
San Diego Union-Tribune

Angel Biotechnology will establish a new manufacturing facility in Newcastle, UK

The Herald

SAFC has completed the first projects at its large scale High Potency facility in Verona, WI

SAFC

Wednesday 16 February 2011

Endeavour Speciality Chemicals has added compounds for oncology research and novel thioamides to its building blocks and reactive intermediates range

ImPress PR

Robinson Brothers has invested £300,000 in a calorimetry lab for scale-up process safety

Pharma

Profits fall at Dishman

Dishman Pharmaceuticals reported a its net profits fell 94% during its Q3 ended 31 December 2010, while turnover increased 4% to $51m. The company said performance was affected by a lower-than-expected performance at its Carbogen Amcis subsidiary.
Business Standard

FDA to outsource foreign plant inspections

The US FDA is looking to increase the number of overseas plant inspections through the use of third-party inspectors, according to John Taylor, the agency’s acting principal deputy commissioner. The agency is looking to reduce the average of nine yeas between plant inspections overseas.
Bloomberg

Angel Biotechnology has signed a five year pricing agreement with Materia Medica with a potential value of over £4.5m

Angel Bio

Q4 2010 sales at Cambrex rose 8% to $63.5m as a result of order timing and higher API sales

In-pharma Technologist

Monday 14 February 2011

Merck's BioManufacturing Network will manufacture large scale GMP clinical supplies of Nuron Biotech's NU100 recombinant human interferon beta

Merck

Record quarter for SAFC

Sigma-Aldrich's SAFC business unit reported recede sales of $171m in Q4 2010. Sales for the unit in the full year 2010 were $647m up 9% on 2009. Rakesh Sachdev, Sigma-Aldrich cep, president and director said the company is "pleased with the higher level of SAFC's booked orders for future delivery as that is an indicator of future growth for that business". He added that "we expect our SAFC Pharmaceutical business to improve further in 2011" as a result of new added capacity in Wisconsin and California. Additionally, Sachdev said that despite the challenges facing the SAFC Custom Pharma business in Europe the SAFC Custom Pharma business in the US and the international markets is doing quite well.
Seeking Alpha

Novasep has partnered with instrAction to develop and operate or supply optimised large-scale chromatography processes to purify taxane-based APIs

In-pharma Technologist

DSM Biologics has achieved 11.5g/L tiers using its XD process technology with a CHO cell line producing an Fc-fusion protein

DSM

Wednesday 9 February 2011

Boehringer to manufacture Elan antibodies

Boehringer Ingelheim will provide technical development, clinical manufacturing and all related regulatory filing support services for antibodies discovered by Elan.
RTE

The assets of Phoenix Chemicals in Arran and the Wirral, UK, are for sale by the administrators

Winter Hill

DSM Biologics will provide process development and cGMP manufacturing for NKT Therapeutics lead product iNKT mAb

DSM

Tuesday 8 February 2011

Ampac adds new facility

Ampac Fine Chemicals has added a second semi-works facility in Rancho Cordova, CA. The company said the facility was part of several capital improvements in progress during 2011 and became fully operational in January. This facility offers a state of the art, remotely operable facility that is designed to safely run hydrogenations, hazardous chemistry and potent compound processes.
Ampac

Dalton Pharma will provide cGMP API manufacturing and fill/finish services for Oncovir’s collaboration with the Cancer Vaccine Acceleration Fund

Dalton

ScinoPharm will provide commercial manufacturing for Clinical Data's vilazodone hydrochloride API

ScinoPharm

KaloBios Pharmaceuticals will use BioWa and Lonza's Potelligent CHOK1SV cell line for the development and production of its Humaneered antibodies

Genetic Engineering News

Almac has opened analytical labs at its new headquarters in Pennsylvania

Outsourcing Pharma

Monday 7 February 2011

Former Biogen Idec President and CEO, James Mullen, has been appointed as CEO of Patheon

Research Triangle News

Large scale manufacturing underpins AMRI revenues

Contract revenues rose 4% at AMRI to $163.2m in 2010. Of this revenues for development/small scale manufacturing fell 4% to $36.5m and revenues for large scale manufacturing grew 13% to $71.0m.
Albany Business Review

Pharma products boost Codexis revenues

Codexis' revenues grew 29% to $107.1m in 2010. The growth was driven by a 77% increase in sales of pharmaceutical products, from $18.6m to $32.8m, and increases in collaborative R&D and government grants. The company reported a net loss of $8.5m a reduction on the loss of $20.3m in 2009. Codexis forecasts revenues of over $120m in 2011.
Codexis

Nitto Denko has acquired Avecia Biotechnology, the DNA- and RNA-based therapeutics manufacturer

Mass High Tech

AMRI's Burlington, MA, facility has received approval from the Italian Medicines Agency for the manufacture of octreotide for a customer in the EU

RTT

ICIG to buy Genzyme API unit

International Chemical Investors Group is to acquire Genzyme's API manufacturing unit. ICIG will maintain operations at Genzyme's Liestal, Switzerland, facility and rename the unit Corden Pharma Switzerland LLC. As part of the agreement, ICIG will enter into a five-year supply contract to provide Genzyme with materials needed for the production of eliglustat tartrate, an investigational treatment for Gaucher disease Type 1 that is currently in phase 3 clinical trials. Additionally, ICIG will supply materials needed for the manufacture of other treatments in earlier stages of development. Financial terms for the agreement, expected to close during Q1, were not disclosed.
Boston Globe

RecipharmCobra Biologics has been granted European patents on its Xer-cise genetic engineering technology

Recipharm

Carbogen Amcis has installed new stability study capabilities at its Hunzenschwil, Switzerland-site to meet ICH guidelines

Contract Pharma

Wednesday 2 February 2011

Informex returns to New Orleans, 14-17 February 2012

Informex

Fine chems grow for Johnson Matthey in Q3

Q3 sales at Johnson Matthey's Fine Chemicals Division improved 10% over last year. The company said sales of APIs remained good, particularly in North America, and the performance of its Pharmaceutical Services business continued to improve.
Johnson Matthey

Laureate Pharma has changed its name to Laureate Biopharmaceutical Services

Laureate Biopharma