The Hindu Business Line : Biocon launches bio insulin

Dr Arvind Atignal, COO, Clinigene, and Ms Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Chairman and Managing Director, Biocon Ltd, at the launch of Insugen bio insulin in Bangalore on Wednesday. — G.R.N. Somashekar

Bangalore , Nov. 10

BIOCON Ltd on Wednesday launched Insugen, becoming the fourth player in the country in branded human recombinant insulin.

Offered at an introductory Rs 126 per 10-ml vial, Insugen is easily the lowest priced human insulin currently available in the country. The company expects to garner 20 per cent share (Rs 45 crore) of the Rs 220-crore domestic human insulin market over the next two years, according to Ms Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Chairman and Managing Director of the Rs 540-crore Biocon.

Insugen will be taken across the global market and is being registered in 20 countries including the US. Biocon is also the first Indian insulin producer to submit a DMF (drug master file) to the USFDA. A European DMF would be made soon.

It would not be an easy going in regulated markets such as the US where prices rule thrice as high as in India; Biocon would enter into marketing tie-ups with players in these countries, said Mr Ajay Bharadwaj, President- Marketing. The product was expected to be launched in 3-6 months in West and South-East Asia, Latin America where regulatory barriers were relatively low.

Biocon becomes the newest player in the country's growing insulin segment that is dominated by MNCs Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly; and the second Indian entrant after Wockhardt, which launched its r-DNA product Wosulin last year.

Ms Mazumdar-Shaw said Insugen was the world's first insulin made from a unique pichia (yeast) expression.

The three Insugen formulations — regular or rapid acting; mixed or bi-phasic; and NPH or long-acting - would be available across the country except in eastern India. A field force of 100 persons had been put in place.

Over the past four years, Biocon has invested Rs 55 crore in its insulin plant — said to be the Asia's largest and capable of meeting five times the country's insulin demand - and another Rs 20 crore in R&D of the project.

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