AstraZeneca’s Ohio facility, which was part of the United States covid vaccine production network, has new ownership.
The sale of AstraZeneca’s West Chester site has been locked and the buyer is a U.S. company that was recently founded in November 2020, named Resilience. Along with the sale of the facility, a long-term agreement in regard to biomanufacturing was also made under which some AstraZeneca medicines will be manufactured in the facility.
AstraZeneca is a Swedish-British multinational biotechnology company headquartered in Cambridge, England. The company prioritizes three areas; rare diseases, oncology, and biopharmaceuticals. Because of this, the company spends a hefty amount on research and development to ensure the best benefit delivery to all patients and global societies.
According to Andrew Wirths, SVP (senior vice president) of AstraZeneca’s Americas supply region, the current workforce at the Ohio facility, which is over 500 in number, will retain their jobs after Resilience takes over the site.
The West Chester site deal between Resilience and AstraZeneca is expected to close at the start of 2023. A spokesperson of AstraZeneca stated that the financial terms of the deal had not been revealed by either of the companies.
The space is a commercial-scale facility that is 580,000-square-foot in size and has been supplying medicine to global markets in the past, according to Resilience. The facility has end-to-end drug manufacturing capabilities, including autoinjectors, aseptic filling, inspection, packaging and labeling, and cold chain operations for vials, cartridges, and prefilled syringes. Resilience also mentioned a VR (virtual reality) training center featured inside the facility. Resilience also pointed out that the West Chester site has more capacity to cater to new projects and it is readily available.
Some time ago, this West Chester site was being used by AstraZeneca for the filling and packaging of covid vaccines in the United States. Vaxzevria, AstraZeneca’s shot did not move onto the regulatory finish line in the country, after which the company officially pulled out of it at the start of November.
Resilience stated that it aims to shape the most advanced biopharma manufacturing ecosystem in the world, and has enjoyed rapid growth in the market. September of 2021 saw Moderna, a big player in mRNA technology, selecting Resilience for the manufacturing of a vaccine drug substance at a facility in Canada that the company had acquired recently. It is worth mentioning that Resilience was not even a year old at that time.
Resilience had numerous deals with big-name medical centers in 2022. These include the Mayo Clinic and The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. The collaboration with Mayo Clinic was regarding the delivery of novel drug therapy products for complex and rare medical conditions. Resilience was also named as an Industry Resource Partner in CIRM’s (California Institute for Regenerative Medicine) Industry Alliance Program (IAP) back in August.
