Aragen Life Sciences has invested $30m to set up a new biologics manufacturing facility in Bangalore, India.
The almost 160,000ft² site will have a process development laboratory and multiple GMP manufacturing suites equipped with single-use bioreactors.
The site will augment the bioproduction capability of the company’s facility in California, US, by developing and producing monoclonal antibodies and therapeutic and fusion proteins.
While the process development laboratory is expected to be operational by Q3 2024, the first manufacturing suite will open in Q3 2025.
The demand for biologics manufacturing has been increasing in recent years. Multiple companies have invested millions in building biologics manufacturing facilities. Biologics are forecasted to generate $120bn in sales in 2027, as per GlobalData.
There are 47 protein and peptide-type biologics manufacturing facilities operated by 39 contract manufacturing companies currently operational in India, as per GlobalData. Furthermore, there are five cell and gene therapy manufacturing facilities in India.
GlobalData is the parent company of Pharmaceutical Technology.
"Setting up of a biologics manufacturing facility in India is part of our forward integration strategy for our US-based biologics business, allowing Aragen to offer integrated gene-to-GMP solutions to our customers,” said Aragen Life Sciences’s CEO Manni Kantipudi in a 30 October press release.
“As the molecule advances, Aragen can tech-transfer the programme to our world-class manufacturing facility in Bangalore, offering better COGS [cost of goods sold] to our customers.”
The facility will also feature further plasmid DNA, mRNA and cell and gene therapy capabilities.
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