GSK breaks ground on $175m German Bexsero vaccine facility
The UK-headquartered Big Biopharma firm announced the investment last October and yesterday began construction on the new facility at its site in Marburg, Hesse.
The site was transferred to GSK through a $7bn asset deal in 2014 with Novartis, and the new facility will allow the firm to bring production of its meningococcal B vaccine Bexsero in-house, spokesman Volker Husslein told us last week.
The vaccine – approved in the US in 2015 and the EU in 2016 – is currently being made by Novartis at its Kundl, Austria plant, but once operational the Marburg facility will make three of the four active components of Bexsero.
Validation runs are expected in the third quarter 2020.
“Building a vaccine production plant is a complex and strictly regulated manufacturing process, with hundreds of in-process controls and approval tests to ensure that biological medicinal products such as vaccines meet consistent quality, safety and effectiveness standards for the final product,” GSK said in a statement.
The site has also been subject of a €10m investment to install a mumps vaccine production, a key component of GSK’s measles, mumps, rubella, varicella (MMRV) vaccine.
And last week the company announced a further expansion of its vaccine network, investing €62m at its Gödöllö, Hungary manufacturing site to consolidate its global diphtheria toxoid (DT) and tetanus toxoid (TT) production.
