Californian SU plant set to go online, but Avid already eying up extra capacity
CDMO Avid’s parent company Peregrine Pharmaceuticals announced its new mammalian cell culture facility in Irvine, California is ready for the initial phase of GMP manufacturing while presenting its Q2 FY results yesterday.
The site was constructed to support the growth of the contract manufacturing business, while also providing capacity for a potential launch of Peregrine’s own lead candidate bavituximab, a monoclonal antibody for non-small cell lung cancer.
“This facility, currently named the Myford facility, is state-of-the-art and its construction was completed for a fraction of the cost of building of comparable facilities,” Head of Regulatory Affairs Robert Garnick said during a conference call.
“This in and of itself is a major accomplishments and I am very proud of our team for their success of this achievement.”
The reason for this was attributed to the plant being fully disposable, being equipped with single use bioreactors up to 2,000L in scale. Furthermore the firm predicts the new capacity has the potential to generate around $40m (€36m) of contract revenue annually for Avid.
For the second quarter, Avid saw a 52% increase in sales year-on-year to $9.5m, but said current backlog now sits at $49m which is leading the company to assess future expansions.
“Although, we have just opened the doors at Myford we are already contemplating our options to increase further manufacturing capacity,” Garnick said, while Peregrine’s CEO elaborated further:
“The expansion really is driven by our existing and new clients that have come in and so obviously primarily that’s driven in the bulk drug substance area,” said Steven King.
“There’s space in the current buildings that we’re in, but we’re also looking at other opportunities nearby with the same model as we did for the Myford facility and allowed us to most efficiently grow the business.”
