According to early stage CDMO Bend Bioscience, the company is now part of Florida-based CDMO CoreRx thanks to an equity investment by NovaQuest Private Equity, which acquired CoreRx in 2021. Bend Bioscience, which launched in 2021, will offer particle engineering and manufacturing services for a range of dosage forms, including dry powders for inhalation. Bend Bioscience’s founders and most of its personnel previously worked for spray-drying specialist Bend Research and then for Lonza following Capsugel’s acquisition of Bend Research in 2013 and Lonza’s acquisition of Capsugel in 2017.
The deal includes funding for new facilities in Bend, Oregon, including a ~20,000 sq ft laboratory and processing space, plus offices designed for a staff of 50 employees, and Bend says that it is actively recruiting for a number of positions. The lab may be ready for operations by the end of 2022, the company says; the remainder of the analytical and manufacturing capabilities are expected to be ready by the middle of 2023.
CoreRx and Bend Bioscience CEO Ajay Damani said, “This is an exciting development with Bend Bioscience adding a new dimension of technology and innovation capabilities to CoreRx’s existing foundation of product development and manufacturing solutions.”
CoreRx Chief Strategy Officer Dan Dobry, a co-founder of Bend Bioscience, added, “We feel Bend Bioscience will fill an unmet need, offering problem solving, formulation, and manufacturing for valuable but challenging therapies and collaborating to develop new technologies for the rapidly evolving problem statements in the in pharmaceutical industry.”
Read the Bend Bioscience press release.
