A day after creditors went to federal court in a bid to push the financially shaky vaccine maker Protein Sciences into bankruptcy liquidation, the company won a $35 million federal contract to push a faster and more efficient approach to making pandemic vaccines.
The bulk of the $11.7 million that the creditors are demanding is owed to Emergent Biosolutions, which lent the company $10 million to help seal a buyout deal. But the acquisition deal fell apart, leaving executives on both sides engaged in an angry round of accusations and counter-accusations.
Andrew Pollack at The New York Times asked the government if officials were entrusting the country's pandemic defenses to "a financially shaky or untrustworthy company." But an official at HHS says that audits demonstrated that Protein Sciences is financially healthy enough to do the work.
Daniel Abdun-Nabi, the president of Emergent, tells the Times that a forced bankruptcy wouldn't destroy Protein Sciences' technology. That could be acquired by a company like, say, Emergent.
- read the report from The New York Times