ApiJect Systems America has been awarded an HHS-DOD Title 3, DPA contract valued up to $138 million to accelerate the building of a new U.S.-based, high-speed, population-scale emergency drug injection capability with prefilled syringes from its subsidiary RAPID USA Inc. RAPID USA's emergency program, "Project Jumpstart" is being initiated to supply 100 million prefilled syringes by year-end.
RAPID USA's Project Jumpstart will immediately contract with a sufficient number of existing U.S.- based Blow-Fill-Seal (BFS) facilities to install filling lines and technical upgrades to enable production of prefilled syringes before year-end. BFS is a well-established high-speed medical- grade plastics aseptic manufacturing process that specializes in the high-volume production of pharmaceutical products. Jumpstart will also purchase and stockpile 100 million Needle Hubs for ApiJect prefilled syringes. Jumpstart will develop the capability to manufacture a minimum of 30 million prefilled syringes per month once therapeutic drugs and vaccines become available.
In parallel with Project Jumpstart, RAPID USA will build a network of 30 U.S.-based BFS manufacturing lines at three different, geographically dispersed, sites. Once operational, these 30 lines will fill, finish, and package up to 330 million prefilled BFS syringes per month. Initial production will begin in late 2021. RAPID USA will also build a U.S.-based training and prototyping facility capable of supporting 500 U.S.-based jobs at RAPID USA's three manufacturing sites.
"ApiJect's Title 3, DPA funding gives our subsidiary RAPID USA the capability to swiftly create the domestic surge capacity in prefilled syringes that will be needed as therapeutics and vaccines become available. Project Jumpstart is the first stage in RAPID's HHS-DOD supported two-stage effort. Within six months, Project Jumpstart will create a surge capacity to supply 100 million prefilled syringes and more than 500 million in 2021. Stage two, running in parallel with Jumpstart, will have RAPID USA building a network of 30 U.S.-based BFS manufacturing lines, enabling a monthly production of up to 330 million BFS prefilled syringes," ApiJect Systems America CEO Jay Walker said. "When discussions with HHS ASPR first began last year ApiJect was then focused on global health, specifically injection safety in low and middle-income countries where needle reuse and contaminated multi-dose vials kill as many as two million people every year and infect 10 million or more with transmissible diseases such as HIV and Hep-C. ASPR's leadership wanted us to turn our attention to building a U.S.-based population-scale surge capacity for flexible biodefense purposes. We started immediately, and when COVID-19 emerged as a pandemic threat, our public-private partnership with HHS, which had been created in January, accelerated to focus on building both an emergency capability as well as longer-term sustainable injection surge capacity."