Kyowa Hakko to build new facility

Mid-sized Japanese pharmaceutical producer Kyowa Hakko Kogyo is planning to build a new facility to make investigational antibody drugs in its major manufacturing site at Fuji Plant in Shizuoka Prefecture, in response to an increasing demand for antibody drugs for use in clinical trials. The company is now strengthening its development of antibody drugs.

Kyowa Hakko will establish the facility for animal cell cultivation and refinement with a 5-kilo liter culture tank, commencing and completing it in early-2007 and the end of 2008, respectively, and for it to be operational in the first quarter of 2009. The fermentation-expert company will invest around 3.0-4.0 billion yen ($25.8-$34.4 million) in the facility in total. The group expects that the new site will facilitate the production of investigational antibody drugs, resulting in the speed-up of the development of its in-house compounds.