Business
Ligand CEO Issues Letter to Captisol Customers
SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Ligand Pharmaceuticals Incorporated (NASDAQ: LGND) announces that Chief Executive Officer John Higgins issued a letter to
About this update from Ligand Pharmaceuticals Incorporated
[{"type":"text","content":" SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--\nLigand Pharmaceuticals Incorporated (NASDAQ: LGND) announces that Chief Executive Officer John Higgins issued a letter to Ligand’s Captisol® customers. The full text of that letter is as follows:\n\n\nTo Our Valued Captisol Customers,\n\n\nLigand is in a period of momentous planning and scale-up. As you may know, Captisol is a key ingredient in Gilead Sciences’ antiviral remdesivir, which is being developed as a treatment for COVID-19. This drug has received an unprecedented amount of attention. I want to update you as to where Ligand stands in fulfilling our commitment to all our Captisol customers and discuss our plans to increase manufacturing capacity. On behalf of the entire team at Ligand, I want you to know we are dedicated to fulfilling your Captisol needs with the highest level of service, reliability and quality.\n\n\nWe are proud that our technology helps make important drugs possible. Over the years Ligand has provided Captisol to more than a thousand organizations for an array of medical uses. Captisol is used in the formulation of novel antibiotics and antifungals. It is in drugs to treat a life-threatening cancer, potentially fatal cardiac events and post-partum depression. And now it plays a role in the fight against COVID-19.\n\n\nCaptisol is an engineered mixture of sulfo-butyl-ether cyclodextrins (SBECD) that is complex to manufacture, especially under proprietary and reproducible large-scale GMP processes. We continue investing in technology innovation and in expanding our Captisol Drug Master Files, our safety database and our manufacturing network. We provide the highest-quality pharmaceutical-grade SBECD in the world, at a consistency and quantity that are unmatched.\n\n\nIn January 2020 Gilead informed us they needed Captisol for remdesivir as a potential treatment for COVID-19. That outreach was a natural development as we have had a relationship with Gilead for several years beginning when this drug was being tested for Ebola. We were witnessing the novel coronavirus emerge as a real threat to public health, and as it became clear the virus was not going to be contained and the global health crisis became a pandemic, we anticipated Captisol demand was going to increase substantially. We immediately began coordination on the necessary planning for production needs as initia...