ApiJect Holdings, Inc., the parent company of ApiJect Systems, Corp., a medical technology public-benefit corporation in the fill and finish and delivery of injectable vaccines and medicines, completed a $111 million private round of investment led by Royalty Pharma and Jefferies Financial Group. This investment values ApiJect at approximately $300 million.
  
The funds will be used for continued development of ApiJect’s Blow-Fill-Seal (BFS) plastic prefilled injection system, to deploy its equipment and proprietary technologies to licensees, and for general working capital purposes.  Royalty Pharma and Jefferies are represented on ApiJect’s Board of Directors, along with ApiJect co-founders Jay Walker and Marc Koska, and Hanjin In, the CEO of Tae-Chang Industrial Co., Ltd., ApiJect’s South Korean cannula supplier.
 
ApiJect is developing an innovative portfolio of drug delivery devices using high-speed BFS manufacturing, which is recognized by the FDA as an advanced aseptic process that forms, fills and seals a single unit dose in a continuous, automated manufacturing step.  BFS technology greatly reduces the risk of contamination and error during one of the most critical steps of drug production. BFS is cost-efficient for short and long runs, and highly suitable to scale quickly in order to meet unexpected spikes in demand such as for a rapid response to population-scale health emergencies.  Advancements developed by ApiJect for temperature management now enable BFS manufacturing of a vast array of sterile injectable drugs, including ultra-cold mRNA vaccines. 
 
ApiJect Chief Executive Officer Jay Walker commented: “This is an important day for injection device innovation, and, with that, the future health of billions of people throughout the world.  The investment provided by Royalty Pharma and Jefferies supports further development of an injection technology that can scale rapidly and efficiently to meet global demand for injectable medicines.”
  
The first potential device made on the ApiJect Platform is the Prefilled ApiJect Injector, a single-dose prefilled injector designed to efficiently deliver a 0.5mL dose into a patient with a simple squeeze of the BFS container by the healthcare professional. This new type of prefilled injector will be ApiJect’s first product submitted for regulatory review and approval. 
  
ApiJect recently launched its Technology Development Center in the greater Orlando area to bring to the U.S. critical capabilities for device design and engineering, and BFS mold development, as well as for small-scale manufacturing of single-dose, prefilled injectors and other injectable devices. Its purpose is to dramatically reduce the time and processes necessary for product development. ApiJect’s Technology Development Center supports the company’s existing fill-finish lines at its manufacturing partner site in South Carolina, which currently has the capacity to produce up to 540 million single-dose prefilled injectors annually.