iBio Inc (NYSEAMERICAN: IBIO) is flying in the premarket hours this morning, trading on gains of well over 30%. The gains come after the company updated investors with regard to the vaccine manufacturing capacity at its FastPharming Facility. Here’s what’s going on:
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IBIO Stock Rockets On FastPharming Facility Capacity
In the release, iBio gave investors an update with regard to its work to expand COVID-19 manufacturing capacity. The company also said that it has joined the National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals. Importantly, NIMBL is one of 14 institutes in the Manufacturing USA Network.
NIMBLE is a public-private partnership with a goal of accelerating biopharmaceutical manufacturing innovations and to establish an international, leading workforce to fundamentally strengthen the United States biopharmaceutical industry.
As a member, IBIO now has access to an extensive network of more than 140 academic and industry partners in the United States. These partners include biopharmaceutical companies, academic institutions, research laboratories and non-profit organizations.
While this alone is exciting in and of itself, there was a piece of a quoe by Tom Isett that really led o some excitement. The CEO at IBIO said that the company’s FastPharming Facility is able to produce about 500 million doses of high-quality vaccine product annually. That’s a big point as once a vaccine comes out, it must be able to be produced at a mass scale to help bring an end to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a statement, Tom Isett, Co-Chairman and CEO at IBIO:
If our own proprietary SARS-CoV-2 Virus-Like Particle (“VLP”) program, IBIO-200, results in an approved vaccine, we estimate that we could make about 500 million doses of high-quality product annually at our Texas facility, depending upon the potency we see in the clinic.
That scalability links directly to the modular technology behind our FastPharming Manufacturing System, which uses a relative of the tobacco plant as the ‘bioreactor’ to produce biopharmaceuticals. So, the amount of product generated by a single plant is consistent from research- to commercial-scale, and scale-up is achieved by simply growing thousands more plants within our 130,000 square foot facility. This is real innovation in the manufacture of biopharmaceuticals, thus our significant synergy with the NIIMBL community.
Given Manufacturing USA’s increasing COVID-19 response efforts, we are honored to expand our involvement by joining NIIMBL as American companies with enabling technologies work together to fight the pandemic. To that end, in addition to work on our proprietary VLP vaccine, we are ready to make the FastPharming System available to other COVID-19 vaccine and therapeutic developers on a contract manufacturing basis to help speed their products to market as well.
Why This News Is So Exciting
So, iBio can produce a mass amount of vaccine and has joined a partnership, what’s the big deal? Well, let me explain.
First and foremost, COVID-19 is no laughing matter. Were seeing quite a few changes to our day to day lives. Gas prices are falling because few are willing to leave their homes, schools have closed for the entire school year. Churches have yet to open their doors. This is a big deal.
To bring an end to this pandemic, we are going to have to have vaccines, treatement options, and testing. Moreover, all of these tools need to be manufactured at a mass scale. This is why this news is so exciting. While companies around the world are clammoring to produce a vaccine, very few have high-scale manufacturing already pinned down. This is the strategic advantage of the FastPharming Facility at IBIO. Once its vaccine is commercial-ready, the mass manufacturing process is ready to go.
It’s also important to keep in mind the company’s NIMBLE members. In particular, due to the advantages the FastPharming Facility brings to the table, I’ve always said that I wouldn’t be surprised to see manufacturing partnerships. The fact that the company has joined NIMBLE now opens the doors for these types of partnership talks to happen. That’s exciting news for anyone that owns IBIO stock.
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