Aragen sets it sights on biologics manufacturing with India facility

CDMO Aragen Life Sciences plans to build a biologics manufacturing plant in Bangalore, India, the firm told BioProcess Insider at CPhI Frankfurt.

Chief commercial officer Ramesh Subramanian of the contract development manufacturing organization (CDMO) Aragen says the facility, of which financial details have not been disclosed, will manufacture monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) “for now.”

According to the firm, the Bangalore facility will initially include 2 x 500 L sub-unit bioreactors but has the capacity to add a further 2 x 2,000 L bioreactors if and when required. Additionally, Subramanian told us that the CDMO “expects to grow with our clients’ future needs,” when asked if Aragen has plans to expand or build another biologics facility.

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This is Aragen’s first biologic manufacturing facility and the CDMO expects the Bangalore plant to be open in 2024. Subramanian said  it anticipates hiring around 50 members of staff to begin with and that  by having a biologics manufacturing facility, the company has the “opportunity to assist our cell line development clients with downstream manufacturing.”

Aragen recently launched its optimized RapTr 2022 cell line development (CLD) platform and claims that the platform can deliver titers up to 6 g/L, provide a 33% reduction in CLD timelines, and speed the process of cell line engineering within 18 weeks from DNA transfection in the host cell lines through to the research cell bank.

Last week Subramanian told this publication that a major advantage of this platform and Aragen is they are “a service provider so our platforms have no royalties”