Avecia strengthens Japanese operations
evolving Japanese pharmaceutical market by forging a technology
agreement with a local company,reports Phil Taylor.
The collaboration, with chemical route invention and development specialist NARD Institute, involves the licensed transfer of a selection of Avecia's technologies for pharma intermediates research and development and small scale manufacturing.
A spokesman for Avecia told In-Pharmatechnologist.com that the company has been active in Japan for some years. However, the country is undergoing some regulatory changes that are liberalising the market for drugs and suggest that it could be a growth territory for the technologies that Avecia can provide.
Japan recently reformed its Pharmaceuticals Affairs Law and formed a new Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Agency in an attempt to improve the speed and efficiency of its regulatory procedures' and give wider, faster access to innovative products.
The spokesman also noted that the economic buoyancy that is re-emerging across the Asia-Pacific region is also having a positive effect in Japan - still the world's second-largest drug market despite a difficult period of domestic price reductions and an over-reliance by Japanese companies on mature products that is holding back growth.
Technologies available to customers in Japan through NARD will now include Avecia's CATHy and CACHy catalysts for chiral manufacturing; enzymatic bio-transformations and the recently launched Pd EnCat encapsulated palladium catalyst technology, designed to speed up drug development.
NARD is one of Japan's leading fine chemical contract research and process development service companies, with facilities at Amagasaki, Hyogo and Sakai, Osaka. Those in Osaka are the focus for pilot scale production, while production facilities of up to 3,000-litre capacity, suitable for small scale active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) work to GMP standard, are operated by subsidiary NARD Chemicals.
The NARD Agreement is the latest in a string of recent pharma technology portfolio developments by Avecia. Most recently, at Informex in January, in a joint development with Johnson Matthey, Avecia announced the commercialisation of immobilised CACHy technology for chiral manufacture.
Avecia specialises in the manufacture of early phase intermediates and APIs, and in production of both intermediates and actives for late phase and launched pharma products.
