One worker at a Latvian manufacturer is dead after a fire breaks out at facility

A press re­lease re­ferred to it as sim­ply, ‘the in­ci­dent.’ But a fire at an Olain­farm site in Latvia last week has left one per­son dead, and in­jured an­oth­er, the com­pa­ny an­nounced Mon­day.

Just be­fore mid­night Nov. 26, a fire broke out in the pro­duc­tion build­ing of JSC Olain­farm,  as the re­sult of an ‘ac­ci­dent,’ a com­pa­ny spokesper­son said in an email to End­points News. The two vic­tims were both com­pa­ny em­ploy­ees, and the caus­es of the ac­ci­dent are still be­ing de­ter­mined.

A loss as­sess­ment is un­der­way, Olain­farm said, but pro­duc­tion has not been dis­rupt­ed. Olain­farm AS is a Lat­vian man­u­fac­tur­er of chem­i­cal and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal prod­ucts, and the com­pa­ny has the goal of adding new fin­ished dosage forms and APIs to its prod­uct range every year.

‘The com­pa­ny’s man­age­ment co­op­er­ates with all the re­spon­si­ble au­thor­i­ties in clar­i­fy­ing the cir­cum­stances of the ac­ci­dent. It is too ear­ly to es­ti­mate the ex­act scale of the ac­ci­dent and the im­pact on the com­pa­ny’s op­er­a­tions,’ Olain­farm said in the email. ‘Our pri­or­i­ty is to sup­port the vic­tim and their fam­i­lies.’

Thir­ty-six fire and res­cue work­ers re­spond­ed to the scene, ac­cord­ing to lo­cal me­dia out­lets. The build­ing is lo­cat­ed in Olaine, about 27 kilo­me­ters from the Riga air­port.

In 2013, an ex­plo­sion caused by a toluene va­por leak sent two peo­ple to the hos­pi­tal, af­ter sev­er­al win­dows were knocked out, and work was halt­ed in two pro­duc­tion sites. The com­pa­ny in­sist­ed that there was no harm or pol­lu­tion to the sur­round­ing en­vi­ron­ment as a re­sult of the ex­plo­sion, and a fire did not end up break­ing out.

In its 2021 fi­nan­cial state­ment, Olain­farm an­nounced that its largest sales vol­ume was in Latvia, where it ac­count­ed for 30% of the com­pa­ny’s to­tal rev­enue, and 5% more than the same time frame last year. Two weeks ago, the com­pa­ny ini­ti­at­ed a civ­il case in court against for­mer em­ploy­ee and share­hold­er Mar­cis Judzis.

While oncology researchers have long pursued the potential of cellular immunotherapies for the treatment of cancer, it was unclear whether these therapies would ever reach patients due to the complexity of manufacturing and costs of development. Fortunately, the recent successful development and regulatory approval of chimeric antigen receptor-engineered T (CAR-T) cells have demonstrated the significant benefit of these therapies to patients.

Merck’s new antiviral molnupiravir (Quality Stock Arts / Shutterstock)

After South African scientists reported a new Covid-19 variant — dubbed Omicron by the WHO  — scientists became concerned about how effective vaccines and monoclonal antibodies might be against it, which has more than 30 mutations in the spike protein.

‘I think it is super worrisome,’ Dartmouth professor and Adagio co-founder and CEO Tillman Gerngross told Endpoints News this weekend. Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel echoed similar concerns, telling the Financial Times that experts warned him, ‘This is not going to be good.’

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Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies is in the middle of a monumental point in the company’s 10-year history, and the CDMO is about to grow even more, as it sets out to be the ‘beating heart’ of the UK’s North East Life Sciences ecosystem.

A site in Billingham, Teeside, UK will receive a $453.72 million investment package from the manufacturer to double the existing footprint and create the largest multi-modal biopharmaceutical manufacturing site in the UK, bringing another 350 jobs to the region by late 2023.

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The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Wednesday rejected Moderna’s attempt to overturn key patents related to the delivery vehicle for its Covid-19 vaccine after the biotech sought to preempt a potentially risky infringement lawsuit.

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Just three years after the UK government announced the creation of the VMIC as a part of a plan to develop and make vaccines in preparation for a potential pandemic, the flagship center is up for sale.

Several companies have submitted bids for the center, which is located near Oxford. Construction was set to be completed in 2023 but was later pushed up to spring 2022. The site has received more than £200 million in public funding throughout the pandemic, but need for a state-backed manufacturing center has lessened, as companies have stepped up to meet the growing demand for vaccines.

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Kevin Cook, Sterling Pharma Solutions CEO

A British CDMO and the University of Manchester have teamed up to support the development of low-cost manufacturing of molnupiravir, the antiviral pill for Covid-19 that an FDA adcomm recommended for an EUA earlier this week.

Manchester’s Institute of Biotechnology enlisted Sterling to provide chemical scale-up and process development expertise. That could potentially provide broader access of molnupiravir to lower-income countries. The school has received grant funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for the project.

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Samsung Biologics has entered an agreement with South Korean biotech GreenLight BioSciences to manufacture its mRNA Covid-19 vaccine at commercial scale, the two companies announced.

Samsung Biologics, one of the fastest growing manufacturers in the world right now, will use its vaccine manufacturing expertise to help patients in lower-income countries, CEO John Rim said in a press release. This will help expand their capabilities from drug substance to aseptic fill-finish and all the way to commercial release from one site.

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WalVax will submit a BLA for the project, and GenScript will provide exclusive manufacturing services, according to Asia One.

The project stems form an agreement between Abogen, the  Academy of Military Medical Sciences (AMMS) of the PLA Academy of Military Science and Walvax, which gained clinical trial approval in June 2020. It was one of the first vaccine projects approved by China’s government, and GenScript used its plasmid GMP manufacturing to accelerate into clinical trials.

Vas Narasimhan, Novartis CEO (Thibault Camus/Pool via AP Images)

Thursday marks Novartis’ annual R&D day, and with it comes CEO Vas Narasimhan’s attempt to spotlight the company’s pipeline strategy and emerging stars.

The biggest question entering Thursday’s presentation dealt with how the big biopharma will make up revenues from upcoming generic competition — Novartis says within the next five years, generics will eat away roughly $9 billion in sales. To offset this, Narasimhan outlined a strategy for 4% growth or higher until 2026, focusing on six key medicines he believes will see multibillion dollar profits during this time.
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