Dive Brief:
- Boehringer Ingelheim on Tuesday opened a new $77 million biopharmaceutical facility in Shanghai, China, dubbed Oasis, that will serve as the company's cornerstone for manufacturing in Asia.
- With the new site, Boehringer hopes to become a leader for contract development and manufacturing of monoclonal antibodies and recombinant proteins in China.
- A subsidiary of Boehringer has been running clinical production lines out of its "BioLab" GMP site since 2014, but the German drugmaker aims to further capitalize on the huge demand in China for the latest cutting-edge medications.
Dive Insight:
Like several other big pharmas, Boehringer is betting on China's rapidly growing market for therapeutics, particularly biologic drugs. Over the past year or so, Novartis, Pfizer and Bayer have all announced expansions into China in one form or the other.
Boehringer's new site is the only biopharmaceutical facility using mammalian cell culture technology to be set up by a leading multinational firm in China, and will be a hub for the drugmaker's contract manufacturing business.
The facility will have the a single-use bioreactor that can handle both commercial production and clinical supplies up to 2000 liters. This is just the first phase for the facility, however, and Boehringer Ingelheim has announced that it can add additional 2000 liter bioreactors and fill/finish capabilities if demand heats up. The new facility will employ approximately 65 workers.
Since 2014, Boehringer Ingelheim China Biopharmaceuticals has operated a Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) facility in China called Biolab that runs clinical material supply production lines at 100L and 500L scales.
Boehringer is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of biopharmaceuticals, and has produced more than 25 biopharmaceuticals for global markets. In addition to its facilities in China, it has contract and manufacturing sites in Biberach, Germany; Vienna, Austria; and Fremont, California in the U.S.