Company to launch two vaccines in a year
City-based Bharat Biotech International Limited would invest Rs 250 crore over the next two years in clinical research, according to its chairman and managing director Krishna M Ella.
Speaking to the media here on Tuesday, he said two vaccines for typhoid and Japanese encephalitis were in advanced stage of trials and would be launched in a year. The rotavirus (intestinal ailment) vaccine was going into Phase III of clinical trials and would be tested on 12,000 new-borns. The vaccine is likely to be ready in two years.
“Our focus for the next five years will be on research and development of vaccines to address infectious diseases,'' Ella said, adding the company was planning to spend about 30 per cent of its revenues on research and development and clinical trials. It has a turnover of Rs 250 crore.
These apart, its ongoing projects include malaria, chikungunya and pandemic, and seasonal influenza vaccines. The chikungunya vaccine has completed phase I trials and HIN1 vaccine was expected to be launched this year.
Ella said Bharat Biotech would be the first company in the emerging markets including China and second in the world to produce H1N1 vaccine in a cell culture and not through egg-based production systems.
The company has also completed Phase II trials of THR 100 - a variant of recombinant staphylokinase, a product that has an ability to dissolve blood clots and used in the treatment of heart attacks (acute myocardial infraction). It is looking at emerging markets for low-value high-volume sales of its vaccines.
The proposed Rs 250 crore investment would be met through internal accruals and grants from the Department of Science and Technology and international health agencies.
The company is also investing about Rs 75 crore for augmenting its manufacturing facilities at the Hyderabad plant, which would be complete in about eight months, Ella said. It has so far invested over Rs 300 crore in creating manufacturing facilities.
Bharat Biotech currently has a capacity to manufacture 100 million hepatitis-B vaccines, 50 million typhoid, eight million rabies vaccines.
The company, which launched Revac-B, a hepatitis B vaccine in 1999, has so far sold 1 billion doses.
“The next billion doses would take less than five years,” he said.
