Eli Lil­ly has se­lect­ed the first lo­ca­tion for one of four new man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ties in the US, pick­ing Rich­mond, VA, as the home of a new $5 bil­lion fa­cil­i­ty that will make ac­tive phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­gre­di­ents.

Lil­ly start­ed seek­ing pitch­es in March from US states for the four new builds, a move deemed “very un­usu­al” af­ter it an­nounced plans in Feb­ru­ary to in­vest $27 bil­lion to boost its foot­print in the coun­try.

The new fa­cil­i­ty will make APIs for Lil­ly’s bio­con­ju­gate and mon­o­clon­al an­ti­body drugs, the com­pa­ny said Tues­day in a re­lease. It is ex­pect­ed to bol­ster Lil­ly’s do­mes­tic pro­duc­tion of an­ti­body-drug con­ju­gates and should be com­plet­ed with­in the next five years.

Lil­ly's well-known mon­o­clon­al an­ti­body Kisun­la is cur­rent­ly be­ing re­viewed for rec­om­men­da­tion by the Eu­ro­pean Com­mit­tee for Med­i­c­i­nal Prod­ucts for Hu­man Use.

Sci­en­tist.com, a com­pa­ny that links drug­mak­ers to con­tract re­search or­ga­ni­za­tions, has been bought by the pri­vate eq­ui­ty firm GHO Cap­i­tal.

Deal terms weren't dis­closed.

Found­ed in 2007, Sci­en­tist.com op­er­ates an on­line mar­ket­place for out­sourc­ing drug de­vel­op­ment. By do­ing so, it has tapped in­to the long-run­ning trend of biotechs and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals farm­ing out ser­vices rather than build­ing out in­ter­nal clin­i­cal or re­search arms. Its cus­tomers in­clude Pfiz­er, Bay­er and No­var­tis.

Sci­en­tist.com had raised $47.3 mil­lion from firms like Leerink Trans­for­ma­tion Part­ners, 5AM Ven­tures and Boot­strap Ven­tures. The com­pa­ny is prof­itable and has logged 33 straight quar­ters of sales growth, CEO Kevin Lustig told End­points News.

Plus, news about Apol­lo Ther­a­peu­tics, Re­union Neu­ro­science, Basilea, Tafal­gie Ther­a­peu­tics, Areteia Ther­a­peu­tics and Avid­i­ty Bio­sciences:

🇨🇳 Two more biotechs look to IPO in Hong Kong: Ark Bio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in Shang­hai and Atom Ther­a­peu­tics in Hangzhou joined the queue of Chi­nese drug de­vel­op­ers look­ing to go pub­lic on the Hong Kong Stock Ex­change. Found­ed in 2013, Ark­Bio is wait­ing for ap­proval in Chi­na next year for an RSV treat­ment and a small mol­e­cule for AD­HD. It al­so has pro­grams in de­vel­op­ment for IPF, COPD and in­fluen­za and has in-li­censed can­di­dates from Roche and Com­mave Ther­a­peu­tics. Mean­while, Atom has treat­ments for var­i­ous forms of gout, hy­pe­r­uricemia and chron­ic kid­ney dis­ease in late- and mid-stage tri­als. — Kyle LaHu­cik

Gen­mab has stopped de­vel­op­ment of an ear­ly-stage an­ti­body-drug con­ju­gate that it swooped up in its $1.8 bil­lion ac­qui­si­tion of Pro­found­Bio last year.

The Dan­ish bio­phar­ma end­ed clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment of GEN1107, or PRO1107, “as the over­all ben­e­fit-risk pro­file no longer sup­ports con­tin­u­a­tion,” the com­pa­ny said Mon­day in an up­date to the Phase 1/2 tri­al reg­istry.

A Gen­mab spokesper­son con­firmed the de­ci­sion.

The drug­mak­er had been ex­plor­ing the PTK7-tar­get­ed ADC for var­i­ous sol­id tu­mors, in­clud­ing ovar­i­an, en­dome­tri­al, and urothe­lial can­cers.

PTK7 is a tar­get of in­ter­est for com­pa­nies like Eli Lil­ly,