This is a boost for Lonza, which has been hit by product cancellations in its biologics production business, just as it has been investing in the commercial scale biopharmaceutical manufacturing facility at Visp. The new facility, due to start operating in the second half of 2006, will contain two production trains with a fermentation capacity of 15,000 litres each.
Last year, the company reported that its custom manufacturing activities were affected by very unfilled capacity in its 2,000 l and 5,000 l biopharmaceutical reactors, which drove sales down 19 per cent to CHF 676m (€438m), while operating income plunged nearly 60 per cent to CHF 61m. Operating margins were also slashed from 17.6 to 9 per cent.
Under the terms of the long-term supply agreement with UCB, Lonza will manufacture PEGylated antibody fragments at Visp. UCB has reserved a fixed annual manufacturing capacity for recombinant microbial products, covering the period 2006 - 2012 with an extension option.
Lonza said the agreement "allows UCB flexibility in scheduling to meet the clinical and commercial timelines for its portfolio of PEGylated antibody fragment based products."
"We are now established as the leading custom manufacturing organisation in both mammalian and microbial biopharmaceuticals, both in large and small scale," claimed Stefan Borgas, CEO of Lonza.
UCB's leading product using this technology, Cimzia (CDP870), is currently in a large Phase III program in Crohn's disease and in rheumatoid arthritis." commented Roch Doliveux, CEO of UCB.
UCB acquired the rights to CDP870 - an anti-TNF-alpha pegylated antibody fragment - as part of its recent £1.5 billion purchase of UK biotechnology company, Celltech, which originally designed and developed the product.
However, CDP870 was not without its troubles for the UK biotech, which was originally developing the product together with Pfizer. The latter pulled the plug on the deal towards the end of 2003, and it was the Cimzia licensing negotiations between UCB and Celltech that eventually led to the merger.