Construction partner invests in Japan's UMN
This article was originally published in Scrip
Executive Summary
IHI Plant Engineering Corp (IPEC) has signed an agreement to assist the Japanese bioventure UMN Pharma to construct a ¥2 billion domestic production facility for a novel vaccine against the H5N1 strain of bird flu. As part of the tie-up, IPEC, an affiliate of Japan's Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries group, is to acquire a roughly 2% stake in UMN for around ¥200 million ($1.8 million). The recombinant vaccine, UMN-0501, uses protein expression technology licensed from Protein Sciences and recently entered clinical trials in Japan, where it has orphan status (Scrip Online, June 11th, 2008). The planned manufacturing facility will have an initial annual capacity of 10 million doses.