Biopharmaceutical company JHL Biotech (JHL) has officially opened the world’s first KUBio biopharmaceutical manufacturing facility with single-use bioprocessing technology in Wuhan, China.
JHL will use GE Healthcare's KUBio to manufacture biosimilars and monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) for late–stage clinical trials and commercial supply. The facility will also provide process development and manufacturing services.
JHL and GE Healthcare formed a partnership to complete the construction of the facility in just 18 months. KUBio is a prefabricated cGMP-compliant facility and process solution for scalable and cost-efficient manufacturing.
According to Frost & Sullivan data, the biosimilars market will grow significantly in China, reaching approximately US$350m in 2019, up from $44m in 2009. Local manufacturing in China is a more affordable way to provide modern therapies for diseases such as cancer, which is the leading cause of death in China.
Racho Jordanov, CEO and co-founder of JHL Biotech, said: 'JHL Biotech’s mission is to make quality medicines affordable to more people, and we believe one of the greatest areas of need is in Asia. It was important to us to establish our scale-up manufacturing capacity in Asia with a manufacturing facility in China capable of producing biologics to a world-class standard.'
JHL’s new facility uses the same standardised GE FlexFactory technology as the firm's plant in Taiwan, which allowed it to quickly scale up to a capacity of 2,000 litres.
With the opening of the new facility in Wuhan, JHL Biotech says it has the largest volume of single-use cell culture capacity in Asia.
John Flannery, President and CEO, GE Healthcare, added: 'We have created an innovative solution improving access to biopharmaceuticals all over the world.
'We are providing a complete manufacturing solution faster than anyone else, which means that JHL is able to enter the market with high-quality pharmaceuticals responding to a real market need in record time.'