Lonza breaks ground on new cell therapy facility
pharmafile | September 14, 2009 | News story | Manufacturing and Production |Â Â LonzaÂ
Swiss contract manufacturer Lonza has broken ground a new manufacturing unit for cell-based therapies, located at the Tuas Biomedical Park in Singapore.
Construction of the 30 million-Swiss franc ($21 million) facility is due to start early next year with production scheduled to start in the middle of 2011.
At the official ground-breaking ceremony earlier this week, Singapore's Senior Minister of State for Trade & Industry, Mr S Iswaran, said "cell therapy holds much promise as a cure for chronic ailments such as stroke, diabetes, and heart disease".
"In the past year, cell therapy has gathered momentum with a landmark event – the first US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved large-scale trial of stem cell therapy completed worldwide enrolment in December 2008," he added.
Market research firms have predicted a multibillion market for cell therapies when the technology is mature, but a number of recent setbacks have suggested that a lot of technical hurdles need to be overcome if this promising technology is not to follow the same lengthy path as gene therapy.
Earlier this month Osiris Therapeutics reported two late-stage trials of its Prochymal stem cell-based therapy for graft-versus-host disease that showed no improvement over placebo. Meanwhile, last month Geron had clinical trials of a stem cell therapy for spinal injury placed on hold by the FDA after animal data showed some cyst formation at the site of the injection.
For its part, Lonza said it believes cellular-based therapeutics "promise to address many unmet medical needs across many disease categories".
The company already operates 12 cell therapy manufacturing suites in the US and Europe, so will be well-placed to help companies explore the emerging technology as the technology progresses through clinical testing.
Roche takes option on cell culture unit
Meanwhile, Roche subsidiary Genentech has said it will pay around $360 million to buy a biologics manufacturing facility owned by Lonza that will be used to make the bulk drug substance for blockbuster cancer medication Avastin.
An opt-in deal signed by the two companies would see Genentech Singapore take over the plant in Singapore and merge it with its existing biologic manufacturing facility on the island, boosting production capacity for the fast-growing Avastin (bevacizumab) product at a stroke. The deal includes a purchase price of $290 million and $70 million in milestone payments.
Avastin was the top-selling molecular targeted cancer therapy brand in 2008 and continued to grow in the first half of this year, with sales up nearly 30% to 3.1 billion Swiss francs ($2.2 billion) on the back of strong usage in colorectal, breast and lung cancers.
Lonza's facility adds 80,000 litres of fermentation capacity to Genentech's Singapore operation, which at the moment consists of a 1,000-litre bacterial fermentation unit. The existing plant is awaiting approval to start producing Lucentis (ranibizumab), Roche's treatment for age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a common cause of blindness.
Genentech Singapore will be renamed Roche Singapore Technical Operations later this year in the wake of Roche's just-completed $47 billion takeover of Genentech. Around 230 Lonza staff will also make the transfer, boosting the headcount at Roche Singapore to around 325.
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