ApiJect Awarded HHS-DOD Title 3, Defense Production Act (DPA) Contract of $138 Million in Support of a Joint Federal Agency Accelerated Build-out of Domestic Surge Capacity for a High-Speed, Population-Scale Emergency Drug Injection Solution.
Emergency Program, Project Jumpstart, to Supply 100 Million Prefilled Syringes for COVID-19 Response by Year-End 2020 – and to Supply More than 500 Million Prefilled Syringes in 2021 in cooperation with its subsidiary RAPID USA.
Stamford, CT, May 12, 2020 — ApiJect Systems America, Inc., a public benefit corporation based here, today announced that it 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 Systems America CEO Jay Walker commented: “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 than500 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.”
Walker continued: “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.”
Walker further commented: “RAPID USA is led by our multi-disciplinary team of experienced engineers, pharmaceutical technology experts, and management leadership. Our team is expending extraordinary efforts to ensure that when drugs are developed and tested all Americans can receive critical injections. We will have done our part by providing the manufacturing capacity to support the necessary volume of ready-to-use prefilled syringes that contain essential medicines, be they therapeutics or vaccines. Our public-private partnership, supported by Jefferies Financial Group, and the HHS-DOD Title 3 contract, demonstrates the vital role that RAPID will play in the war against COVID-19, as well as future national health emergencies.”
Rich Handler, CEO and Brian Friedman, President of Jefferies Financial Group, Inc., commented: “Finding a solution to the COVID-19 crisis demands the best from each of us, as companies and as individual citizens. When we learned what ApiJect was doing with the U.S. Government, Health and Human Services and the Department of Defense, we saw a role where Jefferies and our nearly 4,000 global professionals could make a difference. We invested in RAPID USA as we believe it is the right step at the right time, and we will continue to support ApiJect to assure RAPID USA can do their important job of building the surge capacity needed here on U.S. soil to help put this crisis behind us.”
ABOUT APIJECT SYSTEMS, CORP.
ApiJect Systems, Corp. is a public-benefit medical technology company working to bring prefilled, singledose injections to more people in every market. The ApiJect Platform enables pharmaceutical and biotech companies to design scalable prefilled injectors and efficiently fill-finish them with their injectable drug products. This can be done either on one of their own ApiJect-licensed Blow-Fill-Seal packaging lines or at one of our world-class manufacturing partners. Learn more at www.apiject.com or contact Steve Hofman at [email protected].