Amneal Pharmaceuticals inked a collaboration deal with syringe maker Apiject that will see the New Jersey-based biopharma boost its production capacity in the U.S. as well as support its efforts to reshore drug manufacturing in the country.
As part of the collaboration, Amneal will install new manufacturing lines at Apiject’s Brookhaven, New York, facility. When fully operating, the additional production line will be able to churn out an estimated 250 to 300 million units a year, with the potential to boost that number to more than 400 million units annually, the company said in a May 8 press release.
Although financial details of the partnership weren’t disclosed, the project is expected to add an additional 200 jobs to the current workforce of about 800 at the Brookhaven site.
The deal will allow for large-scale production of a variety of sterile drug dosage forms, including prefilled injectables, ophthalmic products and inhalation using Apiject’s BFS platform.
“We continue to invest in advanced pharmaceutical manufacturing in the United States, which reflects our commitment to producing essential and affordable medicines,” Chirag Patel and Chintu Patel, co-CEOs of Amneal, said in the release. “We believe the country has an opportunity to build a more resilient U.S. pharmaceutical supply chain and to onshore critical drug production.”
Invented by Marc Koska, a social entrepreneur who worked for decades in developing countries to prevent deaths from the reuse of contaminated needles, the Apiject BFS platform is capable of scaling quickly in order to meet unexpected spikes in demand such as for a rapid response to population-scale health emergencies.
The system can also handle temperature management that allows for a wide range of sterile injectable drugs to be used, including ultracold mRNA vaccines.
Over the past few years, Apiject’s technology has been supported by private rounds of investment and U.S. government agencies such as the Department of Health and Human Services and the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response. During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the company hauled in a $590 million loan from the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation to boost capacity for production of up to 3 billion devices per year.