As Emergent BioSolutions continues to pawn off manufacturing real estate in its pivot from production specialist to full-time drug developer, Indian CRDMO Syngene International is capitalizing on the situation by locking down its first U.S. biologics facility.
Syngene is paying $36.5 million to acquire Emergent's shuttered biologics facility in the Bayview neighborhood of Baltimore, the Indian drugmaker said (PDF) Monday. Syngene ultimately plans to invest around $50 million in the site, acquisition cost included, according to the press release.
The Emergent site in question—which is equipped with multiple monoclonal antibody (mAb) manufacturing lines—is slated to boost Syngene’s total single-use bioreactor capacity to 50,000 liters for large molecule discovery, development and production services, the company said.
Syngene said it expects the sale to close later this month and anticipates that the Bayview plant will be ready to accept client projects starting in the second half of 2025. The company figures the facility will get the most mileage out of U.S. mAb developers seeking local production, plus antibody innovators from abroad looking to set up manufacturing options in the U.S.
Under the deal, Emergent also has the option to secure manufacturing capacity from the facility in the future.
“This facility is a significant milestone for Syngene and comes in response to growing client demand in the United States, the fastest-growing biologics market,” Alex Del Priore, Syngene’s senior vice president of development and manufacturing services, said in a statement.
The facility purchase will also be “synergistic with expected additional process development work that will be executed in India while manufacturing can be done in the U.S.,” Syngene’s finance chief, Deepak Jain, added.
Emergent decided to close its Bayview facility last year as recently appointed CEO Joseph Papa embarked upon a downsizing initiative that included hundreds of job cuts and also claimed a separate drug product site in Rockville, Maryland.
The Bayview facility gained notoriety several years back when it was found to be at the center of a cross-contamination controversy during the COVID-19 pandemic that ultimately forced Emergent to discard hundreds of millions of COVID vaccine doses.
Emergent performed maintenance at the plant following the controversy, and the Bayview facility received a clean bill of health when the FDA granted the site a “No Action Indicated” classification last March. The NAI tag means the FDA found the Bayview facility to be in an acceptable state of compliance with U.S. manufacturing standards.
The sale of the Bayview plant leaves Emergent with production facilities in Lansing, Michigan, and Winnipeg, Canada, which the company says are sufficient to support large-scale projects.
Given that the Bayview facility is currently shuttered, it's not clear whether any Emergent staff are set to join Syngene's team following the close of the purchase. Syngene noted in its acquisition announcement that it does expect the deal to create new jobs moving forward.
As it stands, Syngene’s manufacturing footprint is primarily concentrated in India, where the CRDMO operates production plants in the cities of Bengaluru and Mangaluru in the southern state of Karnataka. Through those facilities, the company helps supply clinical- and commercial-stage drug substances plus advanced intermediates, regulatory starting materials and certain generic drug ingredients, according to Syngene’s website.
The company’s Indian operations also include a dedicated highly potent active pharmaceutical ingredient manufacturing facility designed to handle cytotoxic and cytostatic compounds.
Emergent, for its part, is now in the "turnaround phase" of its reorganization effort, which initially focused on a move away from the CDMO game in favor of its core medical countermeasures and Narcan businesses, the company's CEO said in a Monday statement.
As part of that plan, Emergent in June sold a separate fill-finish drug product facility in Baltimore to Taiwanese CDMO Bora Pharmaceuticals for $30 million.