Lonza aims to get bigger in peptides
capacities at Visp, Switzerland, in response to what it said was
'the increased demand for peptide active pharmaceutical ingredients
worldwide'.
The investment totals about CHF 24 million (€20m) and is focused on several areas of Lonza's peptides and oligonucleotides (tides) large-scale current Good Manufacturing Practice (cGMP) manufacturing activities.
"By expanding its manufacturing activities Lonza is responding to … the increasing number of new entities entering clinical phase trials," said the company in a statement.
The demand for clinical trial material (CTM) will be met by the construction of a new mid-scale tides plan, as well as additional high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) purification and new freeze-drying equipment.
Lonza said it is the only manufacturer able to offer liquid-phase, solid-phase and recombinant (microbial fermentation) technology for the manufacture of peptide APIs.
A report published earlier this year by Frost & Sullivan estimated that the global therapeutic peptides market is valued at around $1 billion (€756m), with Europe contributing about $300m of that total, and will grow by around 10.5 per cent a year between 2003 and 2010. This means that the European market for peptides stands to double in size by 2010 to $605m.
One driver behind the resurgent interest in peptides has been the development of large synthetic and biological peptide libraries that, in combination with high-throughput screening processes, has enhanced the prospects of obtaining new drug candidates.
According to F&S, Bachem is currently the leading manufacturer in the European therapeutic peptides market followed by UCB, PolyPeptide Laboratories, Peptisyntha and Diosynth.
