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Roche has opened a new $500 million biologics manufacturing facility in Singapore in the Tuas Biomedical Park. The site contains two buildings, one dedicated to producing Lucentis, a treatment for wet age-related macular degeneration, while the other will make Avastin, a targeted cancer therapy. Both projects were initiated by Genentech, now a wholly owned subsidiary of Roche. The project, which operates under the name Roche Singapore Technical Operations, employs 330 skilled workers. It is Roche’s first biologics manufacturing site in the Asia-Pacific region. The first building, designated for Lucentis, is expected to receive FDA licensure in the first half of 2010. It is a multi-product facility with fermentation capacity of 1,000 liters. The second facility is dedicated to producing drugs from mammalian cell cultures and was purchased by Genentech from the Italian biopharma Lonza in August 2009. Its FDA licensure for Avastin is expected in the fourth quarter of 2010. With 80,000 liters of production capacity, it will also manufacture the breast cancer drug Herceptin in the future. |
