💊 BioNTech buys Novartis plant in Singapore; Moderna looks to discover antibodies

#215 | Everything about making in Africa

Hello, and welcome back to The Kable for a regularly light Monday read. We do have an excellent longish read on Africa's native manufacturing ambitions, though.

In deals and acquisitions around the world, Moderna has placed a $6 million bet on an antibody discovery deal with the Hong Kong-based Harbour BioMed's subsidiary Nona Biosciences. And in a quest for molecules that will rid Bayer of the bee-killer tag, it is acquiring German biotech startup Targenomix for its crop protection systems biology platform.

The Financial Intermediary Fund (FIF) for Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness, and Response (PPR), set up just two months ago as a global trust fund to fight pandemics, is getting a new name. It will henceforth be called the less clunky Pandemic Fund. It also gets two new co-chairs. Regardless of the name change, the fund is still at only 14% of the $10 billion it aims to raise.

In May 2021, BioNTech said that it plans to set up a vaccine manufacturing facility in Singapore. In a fresh update, the German mRNA leader said it had acquired a manufacturing facility from a Novartis unit. The facility will also serve as its regional HQ and initially make a range of mRNA-based product candidates and authorized vaccines and therapeutics.