Pharma startup Bryllan targets area of interest marketplace for specialty drug manufacturing, R&D

“I all along said this company was going to be successful and was going to need a lot of space,” said Bryans.

Much of the space on the second floor is still unused. Only two manufacturing lines are in operation, a smaller one for R&D projects and a bigger one for larger volume manufacturing, but Bryans said he will bring four more production lines online later this year.

Bryllan is involved in two COVID-related projects on the R&D line, both involving small batches needed for ongoing tests for the Food and Drug Administration, one a vaccine and one a therapy for use to mitigate the effects of COVID. “If we get approvals, there will be a dramatic ramp up in the middle of the year,” he said.

The company got its first contract in 2016, with the U.S. Department of Defense, to make a new antidote for mustard gas. It now claims 40 contracts. It had six employees in 2016, employed 36 a year ago and has 79 now. Bryans expects to be at 100 by the end of the second quarter and 150 by the end of the year.

“A lot of our employees are new graduates of state universities, science majors and engineers, with $30 an hour the starting wage,” said Bryans.

He said he expects to double revenue this year to about $22 million, with projections to at least double that in 2023.

To fund that growth, Bryans hopes to raise a funding round of $20 million later this year and says he has had talks with institutional investors and some European pharmas. He also expects at least some of the friends and family investors to re-up.

Growth last year came despite supply-chain issues involving such things as glass vials, stoppers, tubing and filters. “Things have gotten better. Manufacturers have added capacity,” said Bryans.

“The ability to make more toxic drug products in a safe environment was an idea whose time had come,” said Winokur. “Our concept of separating suites and individual heating and cooling units was what the market needed. I’m very happy with the way things are going.”

“Gary and Allan recognized there were going to be new drugs coming online that needed better manufacturing facilities. They knew the market and knew there was a dearth of manufacturing available for the new paradigm,” said Gary Kughn. “I knew Larry for 40 years and got him involved at the start and two or three years later, I got my dad involved. Today, we’re growing by leaps and bounds. Over the next five years, we’re going to take this company to where it has significant value. Investors are jazzed about it.”

Tom Nichol is another of the friends-and-family investors, who heard about Bryllan from Gary Kughn, his former next door neighbor.

Nichol was then president of Temperance-based Rolled Alloys Inc., which supplies materials to makers of parts for jet engines. He said he met Bryans soon after construction was finished at the plant. “We immediately hit it off. I liked the culture he was building, the commitment to quality and customer service,” said Nichol. “They had a good business plan, making higher quality, smaller quantity specialty drugs. We’ve gotten this far with almost no marketing. That’s one of the things for the next stage.”

Zach Taylor is vice president of Onpharma Inc., a pharma company based in Carson City, Nev., that makes anesthetic products for dentists and oral surgeons. He said Bryllan was one of eight companies he interviewed to be a subcontractor soon after Bryllan began operations. He wanted the company to do research on how best to make what are called buffering compounds, using sodium bicarbonate to improve the efficiency of such painkillers as articaine, lidocaine, prilocaine and mepivacaine.

The buffering compounds immediately raise the pH levels in patients who have received shots. Instead of them having to wait 10-15 minutes for full numbness to take hold, the increased pH levels allow patients to be fully numbed immediately, which allows them to spend less time in the office and for dentists to see more patients in a day.

“What I like is Bryllan is a small, agile business willing to make something happen. It’s not locked into a two-year lead time when you need something,” he said. “They’re a jewel. They have great people. I’ve been very impressed. It’s been a great experience.”

Bryllan loads the buffering agent into small cartridges, which Onpharma sells to dentists, who use an Onpharma tool to mix it with the painkillers in single-dose amounts.

Taylor said he has built his buffered anesthetics line of business to where he will now require much more product. “We are sole-sourced with Bryllan. They can get me off their R&D line, now, and into their automated production line.”