NCBiotech News

We work hard to bring you news about North Carolina’s wide-ranging life sciences community. Please feel free to share it with others. And let us know if you have something we should know about.

SCHOTT Pharma USA, Inc., part of SHOTT Pharma AG, a global specialty glass manufacturer based in Germany, plans to invest $371 million over the next five years to build a new production facility in Wilson that would create 401 jobs and produce glass pre-fillable syringes and cartridges for biopharma companies.

Funded by a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation’s Regional Innovation Engines, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (NCA&T) will lead a team of university, N.C. Cooperative Extension, business and research partners in developing a plan to share information and technology faster and more broadly across the state by building an “ag tech corridor” from central North Carolina to the east. 

It’s an exciting time at Durham-based Deep Blue Medical Advances as the start-up builds on the success of its T-Line Hernia Mesh, a surgical product that helps prevent the recurrence of hernias after abdominal hernia repair surgery. 

Over the next two years, the company plans to launch several new products that will offer more options for soft tissue surgeries and extend the T-Line technology to other clinical areas such as breast reconstruction. 

As so many various state business rankings reflect, North Carolina continues to move from strength to strength as it relates to offering the commitment to education, a talented workforce and the quality of life that is critical to attracting either start-up businesses or those looking to expand.  

Fortrea, a global contract research organization (CRO) that was spun off of Burlington-based Labcorp in 2023, will divest two of its businesses to focus more on supporting clinical drug development in phases 1 through 4.

Two animal health and nutrition companies that have partnered on product development for close to 16 years are now working in the same barn, so to speak.

With demand for organ transplants far outpacing the supply of usable organs, a Winston-Salem company is addressing the challenge through a novel technology and a partnership with Charlotte-based Atrium Health and one of the state’s largest organ procurement organizations.

Gary Pace, PhD, remembers precisely when he realized that Cell Microsystems had to change. It was 2014, and Pace had recently signed on as CEO of the UNC-Chapel Hill spinout company. He sat in a meeting listening to feedback from potential customers. “We had convened a group of academic scientists talking about what they need. Have they tried our product? Where can we take it?” he recalled. “It was at that meeting that I realized that we couldn’t take a technology perspective on the product.

The North Carolina Biotechnology Center awarded 19 grants and loans totaling more than $1.5 million to universities, bioscience companies and non-profit organizations in the second quarter of its fiscal year.

The awards, made in October, November and December 2023, will support life science research, technology commercialization and entrepreneurship throughout North Carolina. The funding will also help universities and companies attract follow-on funding from other sources.

A Greensboro medical device company is poised to launch a biopsy platform that includes a needle with a proprietary and patented design that will offer physicians a more thorough, accurate and efficient tissue sampling and retrieval method.

Kyowa Kirin, a Japan-based global specialty pharmaceutical company, has selected Sanford in Lee County as the location for its first pharmaceutical manufacturing complex in North America.

GXP-Storage, a leading provider of regulatory compliant storage solutions life sciences research, manufacturing, and healthcare-related biomedical and biodefense clients, has selected Nash County for its international headquarters. The first facility, to open in May 2024, will add over 200,000 cubic feet of secure storage space to meet the growing demand from regulated research and manufacturing activities in the Research Triangle.

The North Carolina Biotechnology Center is turning 40 years old. NCBiotech was founded in 1984, the first organization of its kind, as a catalyst for technology-based economic development in life sciences.  

As we celebrate this important milestone, it is important to take stock of where we have been, how far we have come as a life sciences hub, and where we are headed next. 

National Resilience, Inc. (Resilience), a technology-focused biomanufacturing company dedicated to broadening access to complex medicines, announced the expansion of the company’s clinical and commercial drug product manufacturing capabilities across its network, which includes a biomanufacturing plant in Durham the company acquired in 2021. 

CytexOrtho, a Durham-based pre-clinical stage medical device company working to advance orthopaedic treatment options for cartilage repair, has won the inaugural OrthoPitch Technology Competition during the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) Annual Meeting in San Francisco.

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