Industrial Research supports new facility at NZP

22 February 2007

Industrial Research supports new facility at NZP

Chemists at Industrial Research and its business unit 'GlycoSyn' are excited about expanding production of carbohydrate compounds for big pharmaceutical companies, following today’s opening of New Zealand Pharmaceutical's (NZP) new production facility.

NZP's facility is purpose-built to produce carbohydrate compounds that will feed into a promising range of new drugs to treat cancers, heart disease and other life-threatening conditions.

This expands on what GlycoSyn was set up to do which is to progress the development of carbohydrate compounds to small scale manufacture.

GlycoSyn's General Manager, Richard Furneaux, says the facility is great news for New Zealand as a whole because it allows the country to now produce drugs and components at a large scale and to international Good Manufacturing Practice standard.

"From our point of view, this new facility completes the picture by positioning our offer to clients - that is discovery though to process development then prototype manufacture for clinical trials - and now large scale manufacture. We have been working with NZP for several years and are continuously looking at ways to build on our combined strengths so that we can increase business prospects.

"To date, we've been able to take compounds through to small scale manufacture and then hand-over to NZP for larger scale production - but they've been limited by how far they can take that due to the size of their set-up. Now they have this facility, we can really open the doors to a wave of other opportunities."

IRL’s carbohydrate chemistry team and GlycoSyn have a long established reputation for delivering world-class carbohydrate chemistry expertise to drug development companies. Their business dealings extend internationally to world-class research partners such as Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York and biotechnology companies such as BioCryst Pharmaceuticals who have since progressed deals with Roche and MundiPharma.

Richard Furneaux says this new facility gives New Zealand a very realistic opportunity to build off those type of relationships and stamp a further mark on the world stage.

"Gone are the days where New Zealand was just a bit player - we're pulling in big international contracts now and this facility is helping further seal our position in the market."

ENDS

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