A Canadian firm is joining North Texas’ growing biotech scene.
Evolve Biologics, a plasma-based therapeutics company, is set to break ground on a new manufacturing facility in Sachse this week with plans to hire hundreds on its way to commercialize its products.
“Today marks another significant milestone for Evolve as we take the next step towards the commercialization of our products and our goal of bringing critical plasma proteins to patients who need them,” said Jim Caggiano, CEO at Evolve, in a statement.
The new 200,000 square-foot site off of President George Bush Turnpike is aimed at commercially producing plasma proteins for its intravenous immunoglobulin and human serum albumin therapies. Evolve said the facility is expected to process 1 million liters of plasma annually via its proprietary PlasmaCap EBA plasma protein extraction and purification technology when it comes online in 2024. To do so, Evolve is planning to hire 300 new employees to staff the facility.
The North Texas expansion is being aided by “significant additional capital” from Evolve’s majority investor, Canadian private equity firm Catalyst Capital Group, which Caggiano said has invested nearly $100 million in the company.
Local real estate services firm CBRE has been providing project management services for the facility’s development.
The announcement comes as Evolve is advancing two therapeutics through the development pipeline. It wrapped up Phase III clinical trials of its intravenous therapeutic, which is focused on plasma replacement therapy for patients with primary immune deficiency disease and expects to file regulatory submissions next year. The company’s albumin therapy is in the development stage, also expecting regulatory filing by Evolve in 2022. According to its website, Evolve is also assessing enzyme-inhibiting protein Alpha-1 antitrypsin as a new product candidate.
“Evolve’s patented next-generation technology, PlasmaCap EBA, is poised to revolutionize the plasma-derived therapeutics industry by harvesting significantly higher yields of these valuable proteins from human plasma through a cleaner, more efficient process, when compared to existing fractionation technologies,” Caggiano said. “The state-of-the art Sachse facility… will be the foundation of our future growth and global strategy.”
Evolve was formed in 2018 as a plasma-focused division of Canadian biologics services firm Therapure Biopharma, after the company sold off its contract development and manufacturing business to a joint venture between 3SBio and CPE Funds for $290 million the year before, following a failed IPO attempt. Therapure was one of the first acquisitions by California biopharmaceutical manufacturing services firm National Resilience last year, in a deal that included a “protein-based therapy-manufacturing operation in the U.S.,” according to the publication C&EN.
“We have high confidence in Evolve’s tremendous potential as a world class biologics company,” said Gabriel de Alba, Evolve chairman and Catalyst managing director and partner, in a statement in March. “With our recent successful sale of the affiliated CDMO business, Evolve now is 100% focused on plasma-derived therapeutics and we are excited to reinvest additional capital unlocked by the sale to accelerate Evolve on its path to market.”
