India’s Yapan Bio expands capacity and capabilities in large molecule therapeutics

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Yapan Bio Lab Expansion © Yapan Bio

Yapan Bio, a contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) based in India, says it can now support end-to-end development and manufacturing of RNA, DNA and gene therapy products starting from plasmids.

It has inaugurated a new process development facility in the Genome Valley in Hyderabad, a move that is part of an US$8m expansion plan.

The investment sees the development of three upstream suites, a downstream process development lab, an analytical development lab, and supporting infrastructure.

The CDMO said the new labs will allow it to optimize the utilization of the GMP facility to support manufacturing of clinical trial material for customers.

Nandini Piramal, chairperson of Piramal Pharma Limited (PPL), said the new facility represents the first major step in the Piramal/Yapan partnership since PPL’s initial investment back in December 2021, which was aimed at enabling Yapan to take the business through its next phase of growth.

“It is evidence of our commitment to Yapan and the large molecule CDMO business, as well as our commitment to patients. With this investment, the Yapan team can conduct a larger number of projects than before, resulting in the development and delivery of more novel products for clinical evaluation.”

PPL holds a strategic minority stake in Yapan and markets its services through Piramal Pharma Solutions (PPS), a globally focused CDMO with a network of facilities in North America, Europe, and Asia.

Yapan provides process development, scale-up, and cGMP compliant manufacturing of vaccines and biologics/bio-therapeutics, including high containment product classes (up to BSL-2+), recombinant vaccines, RNA/DNA vaccines, gene therapies, monoclonal antibodies, therapeutic proteins, and other complex biologics.  

India's CMO/CDMO market is expected to grow not only due to the country's large population base but also due to a sharp increase in demand for injectable drugs, especially in cancer research, found a market report.

"With the injectable drugs industry providing substantially higher returns as compared to other drug formulation types, the higher ROI and therapeutic efficiency are anticipated to boost the growth of the CMO sector in the country."