Bangalore: US-based Pfenex and India-based Agila Biotech, a subsidiary of Strides Arcolab, entered into a joint venture (JV) to develop, manufacture and commercialize an initial pipeline of six biosimilar products for the global market. Agila Biotech will be a 51 percent equity stakeholder.

The lead product for the joint venture is Interferon beta-1b, a biosimilar to Betaseron, indicated for relapsing-remitting and secondary-progressive forms of multiple sclerosis, commencing human clinical trials by Q4 2013.

Under the terms of the agreement, Pfenex will assume primary responsibility for development of an optimized production strain, process and analytical package for each product, while Agila Biotech will be responsible for pre-clinical and phase I development, as well as cGMP manufacturing. The joint venture will then progress the products through phase III and into commercialization. Manufacture of the collaboration products will be carried out at Agila Biotech's state-of-the-art manufacturing facility being built with Bio-XCell at Nusajaya, Johor, Malaysia.

Dr Bertrand Liang, CEO, Pfenex, said that, "One of the global challenges for the future of healthcare is to develop and produce products within the confines of a constrained cost environment. Biosimilars are and will play an increasingly important role in patient disease management. This venture between Pfenex and Agila Biotech will allow us to leverage our infrastructure for the development of safe, reliable and cost-effective therapies for patients to address unmet medical needs all over the world."

Dr Anand Iyer, CEO, Agila Biotech, said that, "Successful foray into the biologics space for companies like Agila Biotech would hinge not only on building a state-of-the-art infrastructure and strong technical foundation, but also on creative partnerships such as the one that Agila Biotech has entered into with Pfenex. This will allow us to not only leverage time and cost advantage of developing products in India and Malaysia, but also serve as a gateway to a vast region in South Asia, South East Asia and the OIC region currently underserved as a result of the lack of high quality, cost effective biologics."