Catalent and UMN Pharma collaborate for biosimilars development and production in Japan

Privately-held USA-based Catalent Pharma Solutions and Japanese drugmaker UMN Pharma (TYO Mothers: 4585) have signed an agreement to provide UMN Pharma a broad range of biosimilar cell lines using Catalent’s proprietary GPEx technology. The development and manufacturing programs will benefit from the GPEx technology producing very stable and high yielding cell lines.

Under the accord, UMN Pharma and its subsidiary UNIGEN, which is a contract manufacturer, will produce a number of biosimilars using Catalent’s GPEx cell lines. UMN Pharma, separately, will build an alliance of pharmaceutical companies for product development including clinical trials, marketing and sales. UMN Pharma plans to begin multiple biosimilar projects with its alliance companies for the Asian market on an ongoing basis.

“There are great synergies between UMN Pharma and Catalent in terms of technologies, business structure, speed and culture,” commented Masahiro Michishita, executive chairman of UMN Pharma, adding: “Harnessing Catalent’s broad biologics development and cell construction expertise gives UMN Pharma a unique platform to grow our biosimilars business globally.”