Aragen confirms $30m manufacturing facility investment in India

Headquartered in India, CDMO Aragen is setting up a biologics manufacturing facility in Bengaluru to augment its bioproduction capabilities. 

Spanning over 160,000 square feet, the facility will include process development labs and multiple manufacturing suites with supporting functions like quality control labs for analytical and microbiological purposes.  

In 2022 at CPHI Frankfurt, the firm announced its plans to construct a biologics manufacturing facility in Bengaluru, India. The facility will provide comprehensive solutions ranging from large-scale drug substance (DS) manufacturing, analytical development, pilot production, process development, and validation to stability services and pilot production. 

c/o Aragen

When first announced, the firm said the facility would focus on the production of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) “for now.” However, the plant, which is aimed to support the company’s bioproduction capacity in California will also develop and produce fusion proteins, and therapeutic proteins. 

“Aragen will provide services from discovery through to commercial launch of new biologicals not only in areas like biology, protein sciences, and cell line development but also helping in accelerating timelines by advancing into development and potential commercial manufacturing. In fact, for several years now, our customer base has been requesting that we integrate further downstream, from development into manufacturing,” Ramesh Subramaniam, CCO at Aragen told BioProcess Insider. 

Moreover, meeting the needs of its customer base, the manufacturing suites will be outfitted with advanced downstream purification capabilities and enhanced processing using single-use bioreactors.     

“A couple of reasons making India into a highly attractive region for biological manufacturing are the growing knowledge base and the quality of science that India today offers is the same as in any of the western markets. Also, India offers attractive costs of production verses the West and has an edge over other Asian markets. We expect this to be a major area of contract services growth in the next 2-3 years. However, one of the key challenges is access to the right talent pool,” said Subramaniam.

The process development laboratory is expected to be operational by Q3 2024, whereas the first manufacturing unit is scheduled to open in the third quarter of 2025. According to reports, to meet the rising demands, the facility will include plasmid DNA (pDNA), messenger RNA (mRNA), cell and gene therapy (CGT), microbial manufacturing and additional GMP manufacturing suites.

“We are agnostic to both geographies and client segments; but most of our revenues come from the West and from the human and animal health segments. The value proposition that Aragen offers, which integrates high quality discovery and development solutions from our R&D labs in the US with tech transfer and cost-effective manufacturing at our facility in Bangalore, is unique and has been highly attractive to our customers.”