After several notable moves to grow the reach of its biomanufacturing platform in recent months, Antheia is linking arms with a pharmaceutical ingredient juggernaut in this field.
Antheia is teaming up with TAPI—Teva’s active pharmaceutical ingredient and contract manufacturing business—in a bid to further commercialize its pipeline of biosynthetic API and key start materials (KSMs), the partners said in a Nov. 20 press release.
The agreement will see Antheia wed its biosynthesis platform with TAPI’s advanced fermentation know-how and its manufacturing footprint in Europe, enabling the Menlo Park, California-based ingredients pro to bring production of its APIs and KSMs up to market scale.
TAPI’s setup overseas is “particularly well suited for Antheia’s processes,” Antheia said in its release, noting that the team-up will support multiple products in its pipeline.
Antheia debuted in 2015, on a mission to combat drug shortages by using advanced synthesis and fermentation technology for rapid, on-demand production of pharmaceutical building blocks. The company has touted its methods as more environmentally sustainable and cost-effective than traditional drug production.
Antheia successfully executed its first commercialization project a little over a year ago with delivery of a full-scale order of thebaine, a KSM used to make medicines for post-surgery and acute pain, overdose rescue drugs and addiction treatments. At the time, the company noted it was continuing to produce the starting material with its European CDMO partner, Olon, and was “actively pursuing a U.S. manufacturing strategy to serve market demand for a domestic supplier of thebaine, among other KSMs and APIs.”
Thebaine is a key component of the overdose rescue medication Narcan.
“As demand for Antheia’s products continues to grow, our ability to both increase the scale of existing products and accelerate future product launches is critical,” Zack McGahey, Antheia’s chief operating officer, said in a statement. “With nearly a century of API manufacturing experience, TAPI brings a depth of expertise, as well as state-of-the-art infrastructure that will empower us to meet growing customer demand and deliver on our commercialization strategy.”
Aside from its thebaine launch last year, Antheia in June reeled in $56 million in a series C funding round, which the company said it would use to grow its U.S. production footprint and kick off new innovation programs in Singapore.
TAPI, which has been in operation since 1935, is a force to be reckoned with on the drug ingredients front. The company boasts a portfolio of more than 350 APIs and operates across 13 sites worldwide, according to its website. And, soon, TAPI may be flying solo.
As part of the restructuring and growth strategy laid out under Teva’s latest CEO, Richard Francis, the generic and innovative medicines hybrid last January confirmed that it planned to sell the drug ingredients unit. The move was designed to free up Teva’s focus on its core business of generics and novel drugs and formulations, with the company originally expecting a transaction to materialize in the first half of 2025.
No such deal has surfaced yet, but not for want of trying.
In its latest earnings report, Teva noted that it terminated exclusive talks with a prospective buyer during the third quarter, adding that it would kick-start a “renewed sales process” as it maintains “strategic intention to divest.”
The terms on the negotiating table failed to meet the bar for Teva, the company explained in a slide deck (PDF) accompanying its third-quarter earnings. The company added that recent geopolitical developments, market conditions and trade policies continue to make TAPI a highly attractive target for potential purchasers.
As things stand, TAPI positions itself as a “standalone unit within the Teva organization and under divestment process, providing both API and CDMO services to the pharmaceutical industry,” a company spokesperson explained.