Taipei’s Bora wants in on the CDMO game as report shows plenty of room for industry growth

Bobby Sheng, Bora Pharmaceuticals CEO

Taipei’s Bo­ra Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals has linked up with Taishin Health­care to in­vest about $108 mil­lion in­to CD­MOs and CROs in re­sponse to a boom­ing busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment for both in­dus­tries.

The two com­pa­nies plan to en­ter the macro­mol­e­c­u­lar, and cell and gene ther­a­py man­u­fac­tur­ing spaces, and strength­en com­pet­i­tive­ness while bol­ster­ing Tai­wan’s CD­MO mar­ket. Ac­cord­ing to a re­port from Hart­ford, CT-based re­search group Glob­al In­for­ma­tion, the glob­al CD­MO mar­ket was val­ued at $160.1 bil­lion in 2020 and could grow to as much as $242.64 bil­lion by 2026. There are five CD­MOs in the world that have rev­enue above $500 mil­lion, while 75% of the field takes in less than $50 mil­lion in rev­enue, the re­port says.

‘In ad­di­tion to in­dus­try gi­ants that in­clude Lon­za, Catal­ent, WuXi Ad­vanced Ther­a­pies, Mi­naris Re­gen­er­a­tive Med­i­cine, and oth­ers, there are spe­cial­ty CD­MOs serv­ing the cell and gene ther­a­py mar­ket­place,’ the re­port says. ‘For ex­am­ple, Fu­ji­film Cel­lu­lar Dy­nam­ics opened a $21M cGMP pro­duc­tion fa­cil­i­ty to sup­port its in­ter­nal cell ther­a­peu­tics pipeline, as well as serve as a CD­MO for iPS cell prod­ucts.’

As a re­sult, CEO Bob­by Sheng and his team at Bo­ra will lean in­to M&A to quick­ly scale up ca­pac­i­ty. The com­pa­ny has com­plet­ed three deals in the past 10 years, and plans to sup­port com­pa­nies with promis­ing port­fo­lios. The re­port from GII points to ‘enor­mous’ M&A deals with­in the cell and gene ther­a­py sec­tor, such as Ther­mo Fish­er Sci­en­tif­ic’s ac­qui­si­tion of Bram­mer Bio for $1.7 bil­lion, and Catal­ent’s grab of Paragon Bioser­vices for $1.2 bil­lion and MaS­Ther­Cell for $315 mil­lion.

‘In or­der to ef­fec­tive­ly al­lo­cate re­sources, in­ter­na­tion­al phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal mak­ers have moved to­wards spe­cial­iza­tion over the past few years, re­sult­ing in CD­MO ser­vices be­com­ing a trend sweep­ing the glob­al biotech phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal sec­tor,’ Sheng said in a state­ment.

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

Just after Merck announced a deal to partner with a manufacturer to make its experimental Covid-19 pill molnupiravir in the US, the drugmaker has reached a similar partnership to make the pill for distribution throughout the rest of the world as well.

Merck will partner with Thermo Fisher Scientific to manufacture the pill for Canada, the UK, several markets in the EU and Asia, as well as Latin America. The Whitby, Ontario site will be one of three in the world making the pill, which was developed with Ridgeback Biotherapeutics.

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Adar Poonawalla, chief executive officer of Serum Institute of India

Covax, which ships Covid-19 vaccines to low- and middle-income nations, is calling for more Indian-made doses of AstraZeneca’s vaccine, Reuters reported, as a key manufacturer plans to halve the vaccine’s production temporarily until it gets more orders.

The Serum Institute of India said uptake has slowed sharply and told an Indian television station that Covax was taking in fewer doses than offered. CEO Adar Poonawalla said uptake is expected to kick up next quarter, but a spokesperson for Gavi, which is providing low-cost shots worldwide as part of a collaboration with Covax, told Reuters the organization is still receiving ‘robust demand’ for Covishield.

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Please signup to continue — it’s fast and free. This article is sponsored by Catalent and produced by Endpoints Studio. Each year, we aim to highlight 20 extraordinary women who are leaving their mark on drug R&D — and this year’s group was no exception.

Our list, while by no means exhaustive, includes scientists, CEOs, researchers and professors who are supercharging the discovery and development of new therapies worldwide. Our team of writers spent time with each honoree (with a few exceptions), learning their stories and sketching profiles, which you’ll find in our special report.

For the second time, we brought the celebration to a live virtual audience, featuring an award presentation followed by a panel on what it takes to break the glass ceiling in biopharma with Kojin Therapeutics CEO Luba Greenwood, AskBio CEO Sheila Mikhail, and Silverback Therapeutics CEO Laura Shawver. Our panelists had a lively discussion on how the industry’s culture has changed, how to handle sexual harassment, the progress we’ve made and the challenges that still hold women back today.

We applaud each of our honorees for scaling the heights of biopharma R&D. You got to meet most of them via brief recordings we played during our live event. Below, you’ll find bonus videos offering a longer glimpse into those interviews. And if you didn’t get a chance to tune in to our main event live, you can replay the entire show.

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Even though many biopharma leaders have come together in recent years to address its gender gap, the consensus is clear: We still have a long way to go.

Companies this year were 2.5 times more likely than last year to have a diversity and inclusion program in place, according to a recent BIO survey, but women are still largely absent from executive roles. Getting women to enter the industry isn’t the problem — studies show that they represent just under half of all biotech employees around the world. But climbing through the ranks can be challenging, as women still report facing stereotypes, and, unfortunately, harassment.

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Matt Kapusta, uniQure CEO

After a five-month hold put a damper on uniQure’s hemophilia B gene therapy program, things are finally looking up as a positive pivotal readout puts the company and partner CSL Behring on track to file for approval in the first half of next year — and analysts spy blockbuster potential.

The companies’ potential first gene therapy for hemophilia B, known as etranacogene dezaparvovec, met its primary non-inferiority endpoint in annualized bleeding rate (ABR) after 18 months compared to baseline Factor IX prophylactic therapy, uniQure announced on Thursday. Factor IX is a protein that’s naturally produced in the body to help form blood clots and stop bleeding, and common treatments today are designed to replace the protein to achieve adequate clotting.

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Members of the public disembark a train at King Cross Station in London, on the day that extra measures are put in place to fight the spread of the Omicron variant of Covid-19. Since Nov. 30, it’s been mandatory for people in England to wear face coverings in shops and on public transport. (Ben Cawthra/Sipa USA/Sipa via AP Images)

Like hundreds of other virologists and epidemiologists, Benjamin tenOever’s Thanksgiving weekend was interrupted with emails about an emergency Omicron meeting.

But when he logged onto a WHO conference call 9 a.m. Monday morning, officials had a surprisingly upbeat spin on the little-understood variant that had already prompted leaders around the world, fearful the strain could evade vaccines, to close their borders to broad swaths of Southern Africa.

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After spending the last 18 months working on identifying a lead cancer drug, biotech startup Totus Medicines has now raised $40 million in a Series A round to get the therapy headed to the clinic.

The biotech isn’t holding anything back in its release, touting its ‘revolutionary’ platform approach and prospects in a highly competitive field. Their original target is PI3Kα.

CEO Neil Dhawan says:

From L-R: Stephan Christgau, Amanda Hayward, Andreas Segerros and Magnus Persson (Eir Ventures)

Swedish venture capital manager Eir Ventures has rounded up a total of $138 million for its life sciences fund Eir Ventures I AB.

The fund — launched just last year — is the firm’s first dedicated life sciences venture capital fund, according to a company statement. Backed by a syndicate of investors such as the European Investment Fund (EIF), Novo Holdings, and new blue-chip investors such as the Sustainable Development Umbrella Fund (SDUF), the fund claims to invest in life science companies ‘with products and technologies addressing significant unmet medical needs,’ according to a company statement.
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