Firm tackles US drug shortages during COVID with Wisconsin plant

After witnessing generic drug quality issues during visits to Asian manufacturing facilities and wrestling with dwindling domestic production capacity and foreign pricing fluctuations, family-run Nexus Pharmaceuticals found a solution a half hour north of its Lincolnshire, Illinois, headquarters.This summer, the company opened a generic specialty injectables manufacturing plant on 16 acres in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin, joining the same corporate park as the soon-to-open Haribo gummi bear manufacturing plant, its first in North America."We always remember that any one of us could be taking any of the medications we make," Usman Ahmed, Nexus COO, said in an interview with the Resilient Drug Supply Project (RDSP), part of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, publisher of CIDRAP News.Nexus's portfolio of 11 critical injectable drugs includes, for example, isoproterenol for slow heart rate and procainamide for abnormal heart rhythms.

The company plans to add six to eight drug products each year.Its Wisconsin facility will produce generic injectable drugs used in such areas as anesthesia, oncology, cardiology, the central nervous system, and intravenous nutrition.

Currently, the plant can produce more than 30 million units on two filling lines and will add four more as it ramps up capacity.Stephen W.

Schondelmeyer, PharmD, PhD, RDSP co-principal investigator, said, "The Nexus Pharmaceuticals facility helps strengthen the US drug supply chain by providing assured quality for drug products made here in the United States instead of somewhere else in the world."Domestic supply chain being 'hollowed out'Founded in 2003, Nexus was 100% virtual, relying on contract manufacturers to