J/V to Spend $120 Million on AIDS Vaccine Manufacturing Facilities

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Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources, Incorporated; Houston, Texas). VaxGen Incorporated (Nasdeq:VXGN) (Brisbane, California) and a group of South Korean investors, including Korea Tobacco & Ginseng Corporation (South Korea), have formed a joint venture named Celltrion Incorporated. The new company has been funded with $120 million for the construction of two new facilities for the development and manufacture of Vaxgen's AIDS vaccine therapies.

A commercial-scale manufacturing plant will be built in Incheon, South Korea and a smaller facility will be built in South San Francisco, California. AIDSVAX, VaxGen's AIDS vaccine that is currently awaiting regulatory approval, will be produced at both sites.

The Incheon plant is expected to produce up to 200 million doses per year and be complete by the end of 2003. Initial plans include four commercial-scale bioreactors, but the facility could eventually be expanded to 12 in future construction phases.

South San Francisco will have a 10 million dose capacity and will also house research and development space to explore new therapies when it opens in mid-2003. Upon final FDA approval of AIDSVAX, the smaller plant is expected to handle initial commercial production of the drug, at least through the commissioning of the larger Incheon site. Both facilities are designed to manufacture not only AIDSVAX, but also an assortment of human therapeutic proteins using mammalian cell fermentation.