Adimmune Corp yesterday announced a plan to invest NT$1.5 billion (US$51.3 million) to set up Asia’s largest production facility for biological agents.
At a celebratory gathering, company chairman Steve Chan (詹啟賢) said test productions of biological agents would begin as early as July next year. If all goes well, the company would officially begin mass production in 2013, he said.
“Founded in 1965, [Adimmune] is the only cGMP [current good manufacturing practice] manufacturer of human vaccines in Taiwan,” Adimmune vice president and spokesperson Simon Kao (高聖凱) said.
“The European Medicines Agency’s granting certification to Adimmune’s production facilities last year has further validated that [Adimmune] is a market leader in vaccine production,” Kao said.
The company said it was one of the local companies to which the National Health Research Institute would transfer production know-how for enterovirus vaccines.
The research institute, which is backed by the government, is in the process of developing a vaccine for Enterovirus 71 (EV-71), a disease strain that causes stomach flu and is especially prevalent among children in hot climates.
Taiwan started developing enterovirus vaccines following the EV-71 outbreak in 1998 that claimed the lives of 78 children.
The institute has completed the first phase of clinical trials and soon after the second stage of testing is completed, the production technology will be transferred to local companies who will complete the third stage of testing and mass production, it said.
Adimmune said that with breakthroughs in the mass production processes of EV-71 vaccines, it plans to mass produce and market the vaccines in 2015, becoming the first company globally to market the vaccine, as there is currently no vaccine against the virus.
The government’s purchases of A(H1N1) vaccines from Adimmune in 2009 accounted for about 80 percent of the company’s total revenue that year. The company is the sole A(H1N1) vaccine provider in Taiwan.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY CNA
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