Novo Holdings picks up injectables CDMO in push for single-use manufacturing tech

Jody Chastain, Ritedose CEO

For 25 years, Rite­dose has been a CD­MO that’s pro­vid­ed ster­ile, asep­tic pro­duc­tion of sin­gle-dose med­ica­tion for more than 8 bil­lion dos­es. No­vo Hold­ings has tak­en no­tice, ac­quir­ing the Co­lum­bia, GA-based com­pa­ny from AG­IC Cap­i­tal and Hu­man­well.

‘The in­vest­ment in Rite­dose is per­fect­ly aligned with our deep ex­per­tise in phar­ma ser­vices. We see myr­i­ad op­por­tu­ni­ties to have an im­pact at Rite­dose,’ No­vo’s head of prin­ci­pal in­vest­ments Ab­hi­jeet Lele said in a state­ment. ‘We are al­so par­tic­u­lar­ly ex­cit­ed to be at the van­guard of in­creas­ing vac­cine avail­abil­i­ty through the use of blow-fill-seal in­jectable tech­nol­o­gy.’

Amid the sup­ply chain short­age as­so­ci­at­ed with the pan­dem­ic, Rite­dose re­leased nine new sy­ringe prod­ucts, in­clud­ing the mus­cle re­lax­ant suc­cinyl­choline chlo­ride, la­betalol hy­drochlo­ride in­jec­tion, which is used to con­trol blood pres­sure dur­ing se­vere hy­per­ten­sion, and phenyle­phrine hy­drochlo­ride in­jec­tion, which is used to treat shock symp­toms.

The com­pa­ny has 13 prod­ucts in its pipeline. Two more — dif­fer­ent dosages of rocuro­ni­um bro­mide in­jec­tion, which is used as an ad­junct to gen­er­al anes­the­sia — are ex­pect­ed to be an­nounced soon.

Jody Chas­tain, the CEO of Rite­dose, will con­tin­ue to lead the sub­sidiary un­der No­vo’s own­er­ship. The deal is ex­pect­ed to close this quar­ter.

‘Our fo­cus has al­ways been on hon­or­ing pa­tients and the peo­ple who care for them, and we look for­ward to con­tin­u­ing to do so with No­vo Hold­ings’ sup­port,’ Chas­tain said in a state­ment.

Fi­nan­cial de­tails about the deal were not dis­closed.

Ed­i­tor’s Note: For more news and ex­clu­sive cov­er­age from the man­u­fac­tur­ing beat, sub­scribe to the End­points Man­u­fac­tur­ing week­ly re­port in your read­er pro­file.

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