Piramal expands ADC manufacturing
Aims to be world number three CMO by 2016
Piramal Healthcare has added commercial scale antibody drug conjugate (ADC) manufacturing at its plant in Grangemouth, Scotland.
The India-headquartered contract manufacturer says its dedicated ADC process development and GMP production facility is one of three ADC production suites at the site. Following inspection in March, the US FDA approved the site for manufacturing. Investment has been made in a new fluid bed processor, hormonal coater and packaging line.
The firm says to date more than 300 ADC batches from 2g to 500g scales, across a range of more than 30 different ADC new chemical entities (NCEs), have been produced at Grangemouth, using a variety of technology platforms, including those licensed from Seattle Genetics and ImmunoGen.
Piramal is currently evaluating plans to build additional manufacturing suites at the facility to accommodate demand for 1kg batch sizes.
More than 90 people are employed at Grangemouth.
Piramal Healthcare’s director of Pharma Solutions, Gerhard Klement, said at CPhI in Frankfurt that Piramal’s target was to become the world’s third largest contract manufacturer by 2016/17, driven by 18-20% organic growth and acquisitions. The formation of Piramal Discovery Solutions after the acquisition of Oxygen Healthcare in February is an example of one such acquisition.
Klement said Piramal would add spray drying technology and capacity, and it had identified some opportunities in sterile filling. He also saw substantial growth in API generics over the next two years and was freeing up manufacturing capacity in India to accommodate this growth.
‘We aim to acquire facilities with products, but first we need to check that they will fit into what we already have,’ he said. ‘We cannot erode our own business.’
