According to a joint media release issued earlier today, Bayer HealthCare and Cardinal Health have signed a 15-year agreement for the contract manufacturing of Xofigo® (radium-223 dichloride). As part of the agreement, Cardinal Health will build a state-of-the art, 64,000 ft2 facility in Indianapolis, which will be dedicated exclusively to the manufacturing of Xofigo. Product manufactured at this facility will primarily be distributed in the USA and Canada.
Construction of such a new plant will clearly make it less likely that we see a repeat of the Xofigo product shortage earlier this year, which resulted from the temporary shutdown of a plant in Norway. That plant in Norway is still, at present, the only approved plant in the world at which Xofigo can be manufactured.
Filed under: Management, Treatment | Tagged: radium-223, Xofigo |
I guess the all eggs in one basket approach backfired this past couple months after the contamination issue in Norway. Good move.
To be fair to Bayer, if you actually read the media release, it appears that the plan to initiate manufacture of radium-223 dichloride in North America was already well into development at the time the problem with manufacture in Norway occurred.