Flush with cash to change the generics supply chain, Civica Rx looks to break ground on first in-house manufacturing site – Endpoints News

Look­ing to over­haul the gener­ics sup­ply chain for fu­ture pan­demics, the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion in May doled out a hefty four-year, $354 mil­lion con­tract to the fledg­ling Phlow Cor­po­ra­tion, based in Rich­mond, Vir­ginia. That con­tract, which could in­crease to as much as 10 years and $812 mil­lion, in­clud­ed build­ing a new man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ty to re­duce US de­pen­dence on for­eign drug pro­duc­tion.

A day af­ter Trump left Wash­ing­ton, DC, the first steps of that plan fi­nal­ly be­gan to take shape.

Civi­ca Rx, a non-prof­it gener­ic drug man­u­fac­tur­er found­ed in 2018, an­nounced on Thurs­day that it would in­vest $124.5 mil­lion to build its first in-house man­u­fac­tur­ing op­er­a­tion in Pe­ters­burg, Vir­ginia — close to Phlow and the oth­er part­ners in the gov­ern­ment con­tract, Med­i­cines for All In­sti­tute and AM­PAC Fine Chem­i­cals.

The con­tract raised some eye­brows in the bio­phar­ma in­dus­try when it was first an­nounced, as Phlow’s CEO Er­ic Ed­wards is per­haps best known for drug pric­ing con­tro­ver­sies stem­ming from Kaléo, a com­pa­ny he co­found­ed, which up­charged an EpiPen vari­a­tion some 700% sev­er­al years ago.

Civi­ca’s 120,000-square-foot site will take sev­er­al years to be­come ful­ly op­er­a­tional, the com­pa­ny has said pre­vi­ous­ly, but will man­u­fac­ture vials and sy­ringes of in­jectable med­i­cines used for Covid-19 pa­tient care, as well as drugs used in emer­gency rooms, surg­eries, and the treat­ment of se­ri­ous in­fec­tions and hy­per­ten­sion.

“Our part­ner­ship and co-man­u­fac­tur­ing lo­ca­tion with Phlow and AM­PAC will be in­stru­men­tal in our ef­forts to sim­pli­fy what is typ­i­cal­ly a very com­plex sup­ply chan­nel,” Civi­ca CEO Mar­tin VanTri­este said in a state­ment. “This is a dream come true for Civi­ca and our hos­pi­tal part­ners as we work to­geth­er to sta­bi­lize the sup­ply of qual­i­ty med­i­cines for pa­tients across the coun­try.”

De­spite be­ing less than three years old, Civi­ca has built a big foot­print in the gener­ic drug man­u­fac­tur­ing in­dus­try. The com­pa­ny is as­so­ci­at­ed with over 50 health sys­tems across the coun­try, which amounts to some 1,350 hos­pi­tals and over a third of the na­tion’s to­tal li­censed hos­pi­tal bed ca­pac­i­ty.

Vir­ginia Gov­er­nor Ralph Northam heaped praise on Civi­ca’s in­vest­ment in the state, as well as the fed­er­al part­ner­ship. The Civi­ca fa­cil­i­ty when com­plet­ed will bring close to 200 new jobs to the Old Do­min­ion state and will serve a key pur­pose as the pan­dem­ic con­tin­ues to un­fold, Northam said in a state­ment.

“This project is a tremen­dous win that will ce­ment Vir­ginia’s sta­tus as a leader in phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing, an in­dus­try that re­mains at the fore­front of re­spond­ing to the glob­al pan­dem­ic,” Northam said. “Civi­ca’s part­ner­ship with Phlow Cor­po­ra­tion, Med­i­cines for All In­sti­tute, and AM­PAC Fine Chem­i­cals will en­sure the gen­er­al pub­lic has ac­cess to high-qual­i­ty, life­sav­ing med­i­cines and pro­vide a crit­i­cal av­enue for do­mes­tic drug man­u­fac­tur­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties.”