Emergent BioSolutions Inc. is an American multinational specialty biopharmaceutical company headquartered in Gaithersburg, Maryland. It develops vaccines and antibody therapeutics for infectious diseases and opioid overdoses, and it provides medical devices for biodefense purposes.
Among the company's products are the controversial BioThrax (Anthrax Vaccine Adsorbed), the only anthrax vaccine licensed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Narcan (naloxone) for the emergency treatment of opioid overdose. The company also manufactures pharmaceuticals for infectious diseases like cholera and typhoid.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Emergent BioSolutions also produced Johnson & Johnson/Janssen and Oxford–AstraZeneca vaccines at one of its plants; however, this was marked by contamination and other production issues, and millions of doses of vaccine had to be discarded.
Company history
Early history
Emergent BioSolutions was founded on September 5, 1998, by Fuad El-Hibri, under the name BioPort, which had formerly operated as a state-owned entity named Michigan Biological Products Institute and was privatized as Emergent BioSolutions in 2004. At the time, the Michigan Department of Public Health, though its Michigan Biologics Products Institute, owned an anthrax vaccine manufacturing facility in Lansing, Michigan. BioPort purchased the facility and the rights to manufacture the vaccine for the U.S. military.
In 2000, operating as Bioport, the company was the subject of Congressional hearings and FDA action (official action indicated (OAI) and voluntary action indicated (VAI)). After the 2001 anthrax attacks that caused the deaths of five Americans and made 17 others ill, Bioport began providing its anthrax vaccine to US biodefense agencies.
Emergent became a publicly traded company in 2006, with its stock trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol EBS.
Mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures
In June 2012, Emergent, along with Novartis and the Texas A&M University System was selected by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as one of the three Centers for Innovation in Advanced Development and Manufacturing. The public-private partnership granted Emergent $163 million over eight years to assist in the development of countermeasures for health, nuclear and radiological epidemics. The purpose is to produce medical countermeasures in the event of a national pandemic. Emergent's facility is located in Maryland and the company expects the site to be operational by the year 2020.
The company purchased Winnipeg, Manitoba's Cangene Corporation in 2013. Cangene's leading product is WinRho, which treats the blood disease immune thrombocytopenic purpura, as well as hemolytic disease of the newborn. Cangene also produces pharmaceuticals that treat Hepatitis B and varicella (chickenpox).
On June 27, 2016, the US Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority contracted with Emergent Biosolutions to develop a vaccine for the Zika virus. The contract was spread out over 30 months and was worth around $22 million. The vaccine was projected to reach stage-one clinical trials by early 2017. As of the end of June 2016, 60 countries and territories had reported transmission of the Zika virus from mosquitoes. Emergent was one of the first companies to develop a vaccine for the virus.
Emergent spun off its biosciences division in August 2016, forming a new company, Aptevo Therapeutics in Seattle, WA. The new company continues its focus on developing treatments for cancer and blood diseases using its technology of dual-ended molecules that assault cancer cells, each end attacking the cancer in a different way. Aptevo had four products available at its inception.
In December 2016, Health Canada approved the purchase of Emergent's new botulism antitoxin called Botulism Antitoxin Heptavalent (BAT). The CDC and Public Health Agency of Canada both identified botulism, a type of food poisoning, as a likely biological threat. Emergent already has a ten-year contract with the Canadian military and national health service to supply BAT that began in 2012. Emergent also provides BAT to the U.S. Strategic National Stockpile. BAT was first licensed in the U.S. in 2013 and is the only botulism antitoxin available in the U.S. for naturally-occurring cases of non-infant botulism.