PHARMACEUTICALS
This, said senior business development manager David Short, was driven by growing demand for small molecules from small to midsize pharma companies in early to clinical-phase trials. Procos expects continuing growth in demand from existing and new customers.
On the purely DP side, Almac Pharma Services, part of the Almac Group, began manufacture of GMP batches from a £ 65 million, 930 m 3 facility at its global headquarters in Craigavon, Northern Ireland, during DCAT Week. This both expands the production of potent and highly potent drug products and enhances its capabilities for the commercial manufacture of oral dose treatments for multiple therapeutic areas, the firm said.
Having just refinanced its senior secured credit facilities, Curia announced during DCAT Week that it would add an integrated, isolatorbased vial filling line and lyophiliser at its Glasgow site. This will be suitable for a broad range of drug product, including highly potent capabilities, and will more than doubles current GMP batch size. Curia has also recently invested in complex API manufacturing and sterile fill-finish capabilities at other sites in the US and the UK.
Other recent DP additions include Adragos Pharma completing a € 4 million project to install and commission an advanced, cGMPcompliant liquid filling line and accompanying cartoning machine at its facility in Leipzig. The new capabilities will offer nearly ten times the production capacity at the site, up to 13 million bottles / year in various formats to supply pharmaceutical, cosmetic, and healthcare supplement products.
Likewise, LGM Pharma has announced an investment of over $ 6 million to expand its facility at Rosenberg, Texas, to increase capacity for liquid, suspension, semisolid and suppository DP. The company has seen sustained growth in prescription drug projects, including 505( b)( 2) and ANDA programmes. ●
Defence of the realm
Lacamas Laboratories has just acquired the former Synthetech site at Albany, Oregon, which Grace closed in 2023. This, said president and CEO Allen Erickson during the member company presentations at DCAT Week, was the outcome of a five-year search for less brutally competitive market to play in.
The company worked with the Department of Defense( DoD) on compounds that are of concern because they only came from Asia, including 4-nitroanisole, 1,3,5-trichlorobenzene, salicylic acid, sebacic acid, diphenylamine, ethyl centralite and methyl centralite. These are not toxic, explosive or energetic molecules themselves, although they are ultimately for use in weapon systems. Lacamas ultimately received an $ 86 million grant to build or acquire the manufacturing capacity to make them.
Lacamas is making various compounds for the US Department of Defense
The Albany site is quite similar to Lacamas’ existing plant, with about 80 m 3 of reactor capacity in glass-lined, stainless steel and hastelloy reactors of many different capacities. The company will use a portion of it on defencerelated operations but most will be used for pharmaceutical materials. Continuous chemistry will be a focus of the investment Lacamas has planned.
A key feature, said Erickson, is a 400 MHz NMR.“ The Albany plant is fully stocked with all the HPLCs, GCs and other analytical capabilities you need to do worldclass R & D. We are doing that right now. We are bringing in PhDs to work in that lab on both DoD and pharma materials. The DoD has made it clear they expect us to find commercial customers for these materials, including pharma.”
MAY / JUN 2025 SPECCHEMONLINE. COM
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