The Pune based, Gennova Biopharmaceuticals Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of Emcure Pharmaceutical Ltd is setting up malaria vaccine manufacturing facility at Gennova's campus in Hinjwadi, Pune. The company is investing US$ 6.5 million and it is likely to commence production by October 08. For this initiative, company has entered into an agreement with Path Malaria Vaccine Initiative (MVI) and it will be arranging funds from internal accruals and partial funding will be from MVI.

The manufacturing facility is spread in approximately 4,500 sq ft area at Hinjwadi in Pune, Maharashtra. The company has designed this facility specially for manufacturing vaccine candidates for clinical trial not for commercial purpose. The facility is dedicated for manufacturing of recombinant protein based malaria vaccine candidate. The company will be employing 30-35 people for this facility.

Each year 350-500 million cases of malaria occur worldwide, and over one million people die. Most of the people who die are young children and are from sub Saharan Africa. Malaria is also a threat in many parts of India.

In an interaction with Pharmabiz, Dr Sanjay Singh, CEO, Gennova Biopharmaceuticals, said, "We are building this facility, with the initiative of MVI. The construction work of the facility is almost over and shortly we will be inaugurating it. We are expecting the first batch of clinical trial will commence by October 2008. We have not specified the number of the products but it will depend on the vaccine candidates and they will be identifies by MVI from time to time".

The company has a consortium with the National Institute of Health, USA and National Institute of Malaria Research India (NIMR). NIMR will also conduct phase I and phase II human clinical trials for the selected vaccine candidates at its well-established clinical trial centres.