Fabre To Focus Production At Its Gien Site

Southern French drug group Pierre Fabre has decided to make its Progipharme subsidiary, which specializes in the production of dry forms, its main production unit on its site at Gien. Fabre bought Progipharme from Rhone-Poulenc three years ago. Liquid production will be switched from Castres to Gien, and Fabre's injectable drug products will continue to be made at Pau. The Castres site will now focus on cosmetology.

The company has said it is "taking on a new dimension" and is setting considerable store on the commercialization of a new anticancer agent recently approved by the US Food and Drug Administration and for which marketing approval is expected shortly in Japan.

The drug, Navelbine (vinorelbine), was approved in the USA end-1994 (Marketletter January 9) for the treatment of ambulatory patients with advanced, unresectable non-small cell lung cancer. It was licensed to Wellcome (now Glaxo Wellcome) for US marketing. Fabre has estimated a worldwide sales potential for Navelbine of $250 million by 1998.