Pharma manufacturing: News in Brief
pharmafile | May 27, 2009 | News story | Manufacturing and Production | Lonza
Pharmafocus presents a round-up of developments in the pharmaceutical manufacturing sector, including new facility updates from Alcon, Lonza, Cell Therapeutics, BigDNA, DSM, Avecia and Velesco.
Eyecare specialist Alcon has broken ground on its first pharmaceutical manufacturing plant in Asia, which will be located Singapore's Tuas Biomedical Park. The new 330,000-square-foot plant is expected to start operations in 2012, making drugs for glaucoma, eye infections and dry eye, and will create 150 jobs.
Lonza of Switzerland says it plans to build a new facility in Singapore to support the growth of its cell therapy business. The new plant, which have an initial construction cost of around 30 million Swiss francs (£17 million), will be located adjacent to the firms existing large-scale mammalian manufacturing facility. Building is due to begin next year and the facility is expected to start manufacturing therapies by mid-2011.
US biotechnology firm Cell Therapeutics says it has failed to find a buyer for its R&D facility in Bresso, near Milan, with a wrote-off cost of $4.7 million. The company acquired the Italian research unit, which specialises in preclinical testing, as part of its $230 million acquisition of Novuspharma in 2004.
Scotland's BigDNA, a company spun out of the Moredun Research Institute in 2007, has opened a vaccine manufacturing facility at the Roslin Biocentre near Edinburgh. BigDNA has developed a vaccine technology based on bacteriophages. The vaccines are fairly simple and quick to manufacture and can be delivered orally.
Contract manufacturer DSM Biologics says it is expanding its biomanufacturing capacity with the addition of a new 1000 litre disposable bioreactor which is expected to be come online by the fourth quarter of 2009.
Contract development and manufacturing firm Avecia Biologics has been granted a Manufacturers Licence from the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) giving a green light to commercial manufacturing at the companys facility in Tees Valley, UK.
US contract research organisation (CRO) Velesco Pharmaceutical Services is expanding a facility in Plymouth, Michigan, in a programme that will create 35 new jobs. The company says it plans to spend $1.5 million on manufacturing space and offices at the unit, which will make supplies for clinical trials.
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