Asia’s premier biopharmaceuticals company, has announced that its subsidiary, Biocon Biologics, has acquired R&D capital assets for a 60,000 sq. ft  state-of-the-art ‘bench to pilot scale’ Biologics research facility at TICEL Bio Park in Chennai, India.  

Biocon Biologics has acquired these assets from Pfizer Healthcare India Ltd.

Dr Christiane Hamacher, CEO, Biocon Biologics, said: “The high-end integrated R&D facility in Chennai will enable Biocon Biologics to expand its R&D capability and accelerate its journey towards meeting its strategic long-term goal of addressing the needs of millions of patients worldwide. This investment will allow us to fast-forward development of our biosimilars from lab to pilot scale. R&D is at the core of what we do and I believe this facility will enable us to pursue breakthrough innovation in pursuit of providing affordable access to high quality biosimilars and inclusive healthcare solutions aimed at transforming patient lives globally.”

The facility will house an early stage research and innovation center including a pilot scale R&D Unit, well-equipped with cell line development, drug substance process development from bench scale to 400 litre scale bioreactors, drug product formulation laboratories and analytical R&D laboratories. The facility is expected to be operational in a few months post qualification and will house over 250 scientists who will have access to state of the art R&D labs equipped with over 500 high- end process and analytical instrumentation.

The new facility provides Biocon Biologics a significant time advantage in comparison to setting up a greenfield R&D project and will accelerate the global development of our biosimilars portfolio.

Currently, Biocon Biologics has a 200,000 sq. ft state of the art Research & Development Centre at Biocon Park, Bengaluru, India. The Company has a product pipeline of 28 molecules, including 11 with Mylan, few with Sandoz and rest on its own.

The financial details of the deal are confidential.

TICEL Bio Park at Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India, is a hub for the biotech R&D industry in major domains such as medical biotechnology, nutraceuticals, agricultural biotechnology and bioinformatics and provides world class infrastructure support.