Swiss specialty chemicals producer Arxada, which was recently sold by CDMO Lonza to private equity funds Bain Capital and Cinven, has made its first strategic move since the separation in July. The fledgling company has announced plans to merge with Troy Corporation, a globally oriented US player in microbial control.
Swiss CDMO Lonza is making major strides to expand its position in exosome manufacturing. This week it announced two new moves. In the first, it will acquire and operate a plant at Lexington, Massachusetts, US, from Codiak BioSciences. In the second, it is acquiring a service unit in Italy.
Swiss CDMO Lonza and Danish clinical-stage pharma Allarity Therapeutics have agreed to develop and manufacture anti-cancer therapy dovitinib. The companies are aiming to start manufacturing the product in 2022.
Successfully managing the drug substance manufacturing of Antibody-Drug Conjugates (ADCs) requires a sophisticated understanding of the technological development process and access to a range of large- and small-molecule manufacturing assets.
Swiss CDMO Lonza plans to invest an undisclosed sum to establish drug product manufacturing capabilities at its site in Guangzhou, China. The investment in the central-southern province of Guangdong will include installation of an aseptic drug product fill and finish production line at the 17,000 m2 state-of-the-art cGMP mammalian facility.
Lonza has completed the carve-out of its Specialty Ingredients business as LSI and appointed a management team led by CEO Mark Doyle, a former DuPont and DowDuPont chief. The newly independent company with a workforce of 2,900 and a global presence in 32 countries is now owned by Herens HoldCo, an entity controlled by private equity firms Bain Capital and Cinven.
Lonza is investing 20 million Swiss francs in an expansion of its API development and manufacturing facility at Nansha, China. The Basel-based CDMO said the expanded laboratories and manufacturing infrastructure should be operational sometime between the first and the third quarter of next year. At the start, some 70 jobs will be added to the currently 250-member staff.
Swiss CDMO Lonza is collaborating with Swedish pharma SelectImmune to develop processes for NlpD, a novel immunotherapy protein that could provide an alternative to antibiotics, given the increasing rise in resistance to antibacterial agents.
As it ramps up production on three continents, US Covid-19 vaccine manufacturer Moderna is expanding its collaborations with CDMO suppliers in Europe, the US and Asia. At the beginning of June, the US biotech announced new supply agreements with Lonza and Thermo-Fisher. In late May, it inked new deals with Aldevron and Samsung Biologics in Asia to handle various stages of the mRNA shot’s production.
In two major new investments at its sites in Visp, Switzerland, and Portsmouth New Hampshire, USA, Swiss CDMO Lonza said it will spend 850 million Swiss francs to expand mammalian drug substance manufacturing facilities. With the two projects, it plans to add 550 jobs, 300 in Switzerland, 250 in the US.
Swiss CDMO Lonza and US vaccine maker Moderna have extended and deepened their collaboration on the US biotech’s mRNA- based Covid-19 shot. The new agreement, which calls for the installation of three new production lines and a doubling of existing drug substance production at Lonza’s Visp, Switzerland, site, builds on a 10-year pact signed last year.
Swiss CDMO Lonza is investing 200 million Swiss francs at its Alpine site in Visp to build a new manufacturing complex for a long-term biopharmaceutical manufacturing partner. Lonza said the project is being supported by an unquantified capital contribution from the undisclosed partner.
Swiss CDMO Lonza and China pharma Junshi Biosciences have expanded their biologics collaboration. Lonza will leverage its global network and local operation capabilities to help Junshi Biosciences accelerate the development of drugs in its pipeline and promote their adoption across international markets.
Lonza Specialty Ingredients (LSI), a division of Swiss-based CDMO Lonza, has sealed a deal to manufacture “high volumes” of Prussian blue materials to be used in energy group Natron’s electrodes for sodium-ion batteries.
Swiss CDMO Lonza said it intends to unload two of its capsule production sites, at Ploermel, France, and Edinburgh, Scotland, for an undisclosed sum to London-based CDMO NextPharma. The proposed deal is subject to regulatory approval. According to reports, most of the affected employees are expected to transfer to the new owner.
Swiss CDMO Lonza will build two new suites for the commercialization of antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) at its Visp site following the signing of a long-term collaboration with a global biopharma company.
Sean Diver, president of DCAT speaks about the pharmaceutical industry’s role during the Covid-19 pandemic, trends in drug manufacturing, and key issues for the EU pharmaceutical industry.
Swiss CDMO Lonza has inaugurated the first of two planned state-of-the-art, highly-potent API (HPAPI) suites for antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) drug-linker (payload) manufacturing at its site in Visp, Switzerland. The new facility can handle compounds with occupational exposure levels down to 1ng/m3.
So far, the pharmaceutical industry — including CMOs/CDMOs and CROs — has responded well to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. However, the coronavirus crisis has uncovered problems that have been smoldering beneath the surface and need to be addressed. That supply chains are vulnerable to disruption when major development, production and transportation hubs are blocked or shut down has become painfully obvious.
For biopharma leaders it is more critical than ever to secure the capabilities to contain, handle, develop and manufacture highly potent APIs.
Swiss CDMO Lonza is expanding its microbial manufacturing facility in Visp, Switzerland, to add mid-scale (3,000 l) commercial manufacturing for multiple customers and in particular to supply a long-term partner, France’s Laboratoires Servier, with active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) for acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) therapies.
To save manufacturing space for its growing vaccines plans, Pfizer has said it will outsource production of some of its pharmaceutical portfolio. The work is planned to be shared out with a network of 200 contractors in the US and Europe.
Swiss fine chemicals producer and CDMO Lonza has signed a 10-year worldwide strategic collaboration agreement with Cambridge, Massachusetts-based US biotech Moderna to enable larger scale manufacture of Moderna’s RNA-1273 based Covid-19 vaccine candidate as well as other of products in future.
The fate of the agrochemical innovation, development, product launch and production are strongly linked to the parallel development of the fine chemicals and custom manufacturing industry.
Swiss chemical, pharmaceutical and life sciences companies help drive research around the world, and major players have research activities in the US, Singapore, Japan, as well as EU facilities in the United Kingdom and Germany. But do not underestimate the role of the domestic regional clusters and industrial sites.
