Editor’s Take: Companies making investments for facility improvements or extensions dovetailed with continuing partner agreements.

This week on “The Friday Brief” … continuing an October trend of acquisitions.

Merck, in Darmstadt, Germany, will acquire Silence Therapeutics, adding an siRNA candidate to its pipeline. LGM Pharma acquired Sannova Analytical, a contract research laboratory in New Jersey.

At least one new business launched this week. Estuary Biotherapeutics got underway with $103 million in committed financing. They aim to develop genetic medicines for patients with serious kidney diseases.

Elsewhere, companies made investments to expand. ESTEVE CDMO is pouring $80 million into operations in China, meant to grow its global manufacturing footprint. In Paris, Cryoport’s Global Supply Chain Center will be introducing BioServices in the months to come.

Recipharm announced two separate expansions neighboring each other in Europe. The company extended the high potency offering at a Spain site to GMP pilot scale. Later in the week, they unveiled a new sterile cream and ointment line in Portugal.

Not Just Facilities, But Also Partnerships

When it comes to expanding partnerships, Eppendorf and BioLabs are doing just that. BioLabs is welcoming Eppendorf as a Gold Sponsor of a new site in Munich. Hansoh Pharma is entering its second collaboration with Roche, this time on accelerating ADC program development.

Roche, not the only major pharma company making news this week either. ScionxBio is partnering with Sanofi for extended exposure versions of mRNA candidates—termed as xRNA. And AstraZeneca is combining its expertise with Oracle’s AI and cloud capabilities to investigate everything from oncology to rare disease.

As always, much more on the week that was at contractpharma.com. How can you stay up to date and up to the minute? Easy—sign up for our email newsletters.

That’s all for this week. We’ll see you next week, on The Friday Brief.