Immunotherapeutics Pvt. Ltd, 1 100 per cent subsidiary of American Bio Sources (ABS) Inc., New Jersey has earmarked an investment of Rs. 100 crore to set up a R&D and manufacturing facilities. The locations are being identified at Hyderabad and Bangalore. It will manufacture novel vaccines for infectious diseases.

The investments are sourced through public funding as the company is set up by a pool of NRI (non resident Indian) scientists, part of the reverse brain drain pool.

The company will manufacture novel vaccines for prevention of infections, monoclonal antibodies (MABs), cancer therapeutics and cardiovascular bio pharmaceuticals, Dr. Niranjan Kumar, chairman and managing director told Pharmabiz.

The company will have a technology-transfer from its parent company in the US and also offer its facility for contract manufacturing services, stated Dr. Kumar, a biotech scientist who had worked with multinational companies like Merck, Wyeth, Aventis before he went on to set up Immunotherapeutics.

"We will also look at alternate locations like Pune for a research and development lab and New Delhi for manufacturing plant as part of our nation wide activities," he added.

The company is keen to have its manufacturing and research operations in Bangalore. Going by the existing biotech cluster and availability of talent makes the city an ideal spot for the development of bio-therapeutics. The city holds lot of potential for supply chain management too, stated Dr. Kumar.

The company is ready for clinical trials in India for the novel bacterial and viral vaccines, which are already launched globally. "Vaccines are a multi million dollar market. There is a serious shortage for these vaccines which are effective for a broad spectrum of infectious diseases. Among the other vaccines on the cards from Immunotherapeutics are protein-based therapeutics and MABs. India has an unmet need for vaccines to control the infectious diseases and therefore our vaccine range will provide the much-needed relief, stated Dr. Kumar.

Immunotherapeutics will go in for production in 2008-end and products will be available in India by mid-2009. Supporting the indigenous production of products, there will also a strong R&D pipeline of drugs from its parent company ABS which specializes in the manufacture of pharmaceuticals, research in Bioinformatics and Photonics besides Biomedical Services.

Immunotherapeutics is also on a hiring spree for its new operations in India and is on the look out for experts in the areas of biologics manufacture, Quality Assurance and Quality Control. A team of 25 is expected to be in place by the year-end.