Takeda building Dengue fever vaccine plant

The facility – which will cost $100m (€94m) - is being built at a site in Singen, Germany and is due to be operational in 2019.

Tokyo-based spokesman Tsuyoshi Tada told us around 850 people will be employed at the facility.

Takeda partnered with vaccine production technology firm Univercells in November​ last year. 

However Univercells old us it "is not involved in Takeda’s Dengue vaccine​."

Trial​

News of the new facility comes a few months after TAK-003 entered a Phase III trial.

The study, which is being carried out at sites in Latin America and Asia will enrol 20,000 health people and is designed to test the efficacy and safety of the vaccine.

Dengue vaccine market​

If approved, TAK-003 will compete with Sanofi Pasteur’s Dengvaxia (CYD-TDV), which is the only approved Dengue vaccine.

Analysts have predicted that Dengvaxia, which was first approved​ last year and is recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in countries where Dengue fever is endemic, will generate more than $1bn a year in revenue by 2020.

What impact TAK-003 will have on the market remains to be seen.

Research in March​ suggested that although Dengvaxia protects against infection, the immune systems of vaccinated people who have not previously encountered Dengue may overreact if they do later come into contact with the virus. 

In September​, Duane Gubler, an infectious disease researcher at Duke-NUS Medical School who is working with Takeda, indicated TAK-003 is designed to avoid such problems.

“An ideal vaccine would have an acceptable safety profile and protect against all four types of the virus in both adults and children, whether or not they have been previously infected with dengue​.”