Amid a spate of drug production pledges from the White House, U.S.-based manufacturer National Resilience has scored new government financing to keep its mission running for the long haul.
Resilience—which launched on a mission to build the world’s most advanced biopharmaceutical manufacturing ecosystem—has netted $410 million in loan financing from the Department of Defense (DOD) and the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation.
Resilience will channel the cash toward its goal of building biomanufacturing capacity and capabilities on U.S. soil. Resilience will use that production infrastructure to crank out products including antibodies, vaccines and nucleic acids, the company explained in a release.
Combined with the company’s existing network, which it has been building swiftly since its November 2020 debut, Resilience believes it can strengthen the U.S. supply chain for vaccines and critical medicines plus bolster pandemic preparedness.
Resilience boasts seven drug manufacturing facilities in North America. It also controls half of a cell therapy manufacturing center through a joint venture with the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Not including the joint venture, Resilience’s workforce numbers close to 2,200 full-time employees, CEO Rahul Singhvi said in a recent interview.
The DOD outlay will further Reslience’s goal to manufacture a billion vaccine doses within its manufacturing network in the U.S. and potentially help the company snare more clients, the company said in a release.
“We continue to strive to become the top athlete in biomanufacturing,” Singhvi told Fierce Pharma in February.
Even still, it hasn’t all been smooth sailing for the manufacturing arriviste. Last month, Resilience announced staff cuts affecting some 213 employees at a former Sanofi plant in Boston. Singhvi explained the move was a “function of transition” tied to the end of a manufacturing contract with the French pharma company, cautioning that the layoffs shouldn’t be read as a sign of the company’s overall health.
Meanwhile, Resilience has picked an opportune time to strike out on a homegrown drug production quest. Last week, the White House unveiled myriad biomanufacturing goals seeking to tackle issues from climate change to cell therapy production.
The initiative seeks to, among other things, improve supply chains for critical drugs and to get a leg up on future supply chain disruptions like the sort seen over the past several years. More specifically, within the next five years, the Biden administration aims to use biomanufacturing to produce some 25% of active pharmaceutical ingredients for small-molecule drugs in the U.S.