NCBiotech News

A British-Dutch multinational consumer goods company, Reckitt Benckiser, is investing $145.59 million to establish a regional liquid and oral solid dose pharmaceutical manufacturing facility in Wilson to produce the over-the-counter medication Mucinex.

The investment announced today by Governor Roy Cooper is expected to bring new life and as many as 289 jobs to a factory at 4700 Sandoz Drive that has been undergoing a shutdown by its most recent owner, Sandoz.

California’s loss looks like North Carolina’s gain.

Astellas Gene Therapies is closing a production site in South San Francisco and transferring all of its projects to a biomanufacturing facility in Sanford, N.C.

The company, a unit of the global biopharmaceutical company Astellas Pharma of Tokyo, will consolidate its gene therapy production at a $100 million plant it opened in Sanford’s Central Carolina Enterprise Park in 2022.

Long-time Triangle ag-biotech executive Toni Bucci, Ph.D., has a clear vision for her new company, Sable Fermentation Inc.: Enable manufacturing and commercialization of agricultural and other biotechnology companies’ innovation, including crop enhancement, food proteins, enzymes and chemicals.

Local, regional, and state officials joined executives from Kyowa Kirin in Sanford on Monday, Sept. 9, to celebrate the groundbreaking for the company’s new biologics manufacturing facility.

Durham-based Humacyte has presented positive long-term results from its bioengineered blood vessels used to treat wartime vascular injuries in Ukraine.

The company said its investigational acellular tissue engineered vessel (ATEV) showed a high rate of patency, or blood flow, and the avoidance of amputation and infection, despite the severe nature of the injuries treated.

The results were presented at the Military Health System Research Symposium, the U.S. Department of Defense’s foremost scientific meeting, in Kissimmee, Fla.

In the 1980s, North Carolina was just starting to land on the radar of life sciences executives across the United States. That’s when I started hearing more talk among my peers about the state breaking into the biotechnology sector in some unique ways.

I wanted to see for myself. My role at Abbott in Chicago allowed me to come to North Carolina to check out the Abbott manufacturing facilities in the state. Then I moved here to take a position as head of international operations with Glaxo (now GSK), where I established an office in Research Triangle Park.

Lindy Biosciences, a small drug-formulations company in Morrisville, has landed a big deal with one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies.

Lindy has entered into an exclusive global licensing agreement and strategic collaboration with Novartis Pharma AG, a subsidiary of the Swiss medicines giant Novartis AG. 

The newly FDA-approved brain cancer therapy Voranigo (vorasidenib) has its roots in North Carolina. It is the product of research by Duke University's Darell Bigner and Bert Vogelstein of Johns Hopkins University and underwent clinical trials at Duke. 

Vorasidenib has been shown to slow the growth of a type of brain cancer known as low-grade IDH-mutant glioma. Servier Pharmaceuticals, which sponsored the drug’s clinical trials and is bringing it to market, describes the medicine as the first breakthrough for this type of cancer in almost 25 years. 

Scientist and entrepreneur Juliana Blum, Ph.D., has been named CEO of Durham-based BioAesthetics Corp., a biomaterials company that received early funding from the North Carolina Biotechnology Center.

Blum officially joined BioAesthetics on Aug. 12 after 20 years as co-founder and executive vice president of corporate development at Humacyte, also of Durham.

A summit on data privacy and protection in the life sciences will draw up to 100 professionals to the North Carolina Biotechnology Center in Research Triangle Park (RTP) on Sept. 10 for a full day of presentations, panel discussions and networking.

Opus Genetics, a clinical-stage gene therapy company devoted to treating inherited retinal diseases, has been granted Rare Pediatric Disease designation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for one of its potential therapies. 

The Research Triangle Park-based company received the designation for OPGx-LCA5, an ocular gene therapy for treating patients with LCA5, a form of early-onset retinal degeneration that causes vision loss.

Pathalys Pharma, fresh off raising an additional $105 million, is poised to finalize clinical trials and pursue regulatory approval for its treatment for patients with end-stage kidney disease.

Over the course of my career, I've witnessed the remarkable evolution of North Carolina's biotechnology sector from its humble beginnings to a vibrant and influential ecosystem. 

In 1996, I had the privilege of collaborating with Robert M. Califf — who now leads the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) — as a member of the founding team of the Duke Clinical Research Institute. We tackled a crucial gap by leveraging academic methodologies to pioneer innovative strategies for clinical research.

Durham-based Atsena Therapeutics, a gene therapy company focused on reversing or preventing blindness, has received an incentive from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its leading product candidate.

The FDA granted Rare Pediatric Disease designation for ATSN-201, Atsena’s gene therapy product candidate for the treatment of X-linked retinoschisis (XLRS), a rare genetic disease that causes blindness.

Graduating high school, taking a training class, and landing a new job made for a busy June 2023 for Jahmari Staton. Then the real excitement came.

A few months into his job on the pharmaceutical manufacturing line at Catalent Inc. in Greenville, Jahmari was at home when he noticed what medication his mother was taking.

“What’s crazy about it is that my mother takes the medication we make,” he said. “When I saw what she was taking, I told her, ‘Hey, I make this!’ It blew her mind.”