Un­lock­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing ca­pac­i­ty will be key for Leg­end Biotech and John­son and John­son in achiev­ing their goal of reach­ing “block­buster sta­tus” for Carvyk­ti in 2025, Leg­end CEO Ying Huang said.

The com­pa­nies were close to mak­ing that goal in 2024 with a to­tal of $963 mil­lion in sales. Leg­end’s stock LEGN was up about 9% at mar­ket close Tues­day.

As for 2025, Leg­end out­lined its plans to dou­ble ca­pac­i­ty to reach 10,000 man­u­fac­tur­ing slots for Carvyk­ti by the end of the year. William Blair an­a­lysts be­lieve Leg­end’s ex­pan­sion will be its main rev­enue dri­ver.

The com­pa­ny has been giv­en the FDA go-ahead for its third-par­ty con­trac­tor No­var­tis to com­mer­cial­ly make Carvyk­ti at its fa­cil­i­ty in Mor­ris Plains, NJ. Com­mer­cial pro­duc­tion of Carvyk­ti at that site start­ed in the first quar­ter of this year and will con­tribute to “sig­nif­i­cant” growth in the sec­ond quar­ter, Huang said dur­ing an earn­ings call Tues­day morn­ing, ac­cord­ing to an Al­phaSense tran­script.

Mer­ck has opened a new man­u­fac­tur­ing plant in Durham, NC which will make HPV vac­cines, in­clud­ing its quadri­va­lent vac­cine Gar­dasil and nine-va­lent vac­cine Gar­dasil 9.

The open­ing of the fac­to­ry comes at a time of height­ened talks of reshoring man­u­fac­tur­ing to the US as a way to side­step Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s tar­iffs on prod­ucts made over­seas. Last month, Mer­ck said it would pause ship­ments of Gar­dasil to Chi­na due to weak­ened de­mand there. CEO Rob Davis said there was high­er de­mand for the vac­cine out­side of Chi­na.

The Durham vac­cine site in­vest­ment is one of sev­er­al to­tal­ing more than $12 bil­lion that Mer­ck has poured in­to ex­pand­ing its US man­u­fac­tur­ing and R&D foot­print since 2018. The drug­mak­er plans to spend a fur­ther $8 bil­lion on these ef­forts by 2028.

Viking Ther­a­peu­tics has con­tract­ed CD­MO Cor­den­Phar­ma for a to­tal of $150 mil­lion to make bil­lions of clin­i­cal and com­mer­cial dos­es of its GLP-1/GIP re­cep­tor ag­o­nist for weight loss.

The Swiss CD­MO will man­u­fac­ture the API and fin­ished drug prod­uct of VK2735 in both the in­jectable and oral dosage forms, ac­cord­ing to a Tues­day re­lease. The CD­MO has com­mit­ted to make 100 mil­lion au­toin­jec­tors and 100 mil­lion vials and sy­ringes for the in­jectable form, as well as one bil­lion oral tablets. Viking will pay in in­stall­ments over the next three years.

Cor­den­Phar­ma has been mak­ing moves to boost ca­pac­i­ty, in­vest­ing an­oth­er €100 mil­lion in­to its €900 mil­lion growth plan. That project will ex­pand two fac­to­ries in Col­orado and build a third on the same site. It will al­so con­struct a fac­to­ry in Basel, Switzer­land.

Zealand Phar­ma has fi­nal­ly found a part­ner. And ac­cord­ing to the Dan­ish com­pa­ny, the li­cens­ing deal it an­nounced with Roche on Wednes­day for its amylin ana­log pe­tre­lin­tide is the biggest ever for an obe­si­ty can­di­date to date.

The com­pa­nies said the Swiss phar­ma is pay­ing Zealand $1.65 bil­lion up­front in cash. $1.4 bil­lion of that will be giv­en once the deal is closed, which is ex­pect­ed to be in the sec­ond quar­ter of this year, and $250 mil­lion over the next two years every time the part­ner­ship cel­e­brates an an­niver­sary.

Im­por­tant­ly, Roche and Zealand will al­so in­ves­ti­gate pe­tre­lin­tide com­bi­na­tions. The first on the list for co-ad­min­is­tra­tion is Roche’s GLP-1/GIP ag­o­nist can­di­date CT-388, which Roche ob­tained from its ac­qui­si­tion of Car­mot Ther­a­peu­tics in late 2023.

Emer­gent BioSo­lu­tions is sell­ing a man­u­fac­tur­ing site in Bal­ti­more — which has a his­to­ry of con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed Covid-19 vac­cines — for $36.5 mil­lion to In­dia-head­quar­tered CD­MO Syn­gene.

This pur­chase marks Syn­gene’s first man­u­fac­tur­ing site in the US. It said it would in­vest an ex­tra $13.5 mil­lion in­to the site, ac­cord­ing to a Mon­day re­lease. The ac­qui­si­tion is an­tic­i­pat­ed to close in the first quar­ter of 2025, ac­cord­ing to a sep­a­rate Mon­day re­lease.

The fa­cil­i­ty in the Bayview neigh­bor­hood has­n't been op­er­a­tional for at least 10 months, af­ter the com­pa­ny closed sev­er­al fac­to­ries and laid off work­ers in May 2024 to save cash. A month lat­er, it sold its Cam­den site for $30 mil­lion to Bo­ra Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, with the trans­ac­tion