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C.R. Sukumar

Hyderabad , Feb. 14

GLAXOSMITHKLINE (GSK) Pharmaceuticals Ltd is planning to set up its own vaccines manufacturing facility in India, with the intent of meeting the fast growing demand for human vaccines, both paediatric and adult.

The new vaccines facility would be among the five global manufacturing centres of GSK, according to GSK Pharma General Manager, Biologicals, Mr Sumer Dheri.

GSK India currently has four manufacturing facilities in the country — at Thane, Nashik, Mysore and Bangalore — which are into producing human and animal healthcare products.

"The new vaccines facility will come up near the Nashik unit," Mr Dheri told Business Line.

However, he declined to divulge further details of the project pertaining to capacities, investments involved and the schedule of implementation.

"We will be announcing all these details of the project in the next couple of weeks," he said.

The vaccines facility at Nasik would take up production of all the vaccines currently being imported from GSK's global facilities in Belgium and Germany.

"We will utilise the capacities of the Belgium facility for making vaccines in the emerging areas for the global markets, other than India," he said.

At present, the company is procuring from its global facilities various vaccines for a wide range of infectious diseases, such as diphtheria, hepatitis-A, hepatitis-B, influenza, measles, meningitis ACWY, polio, rubella, tetanus and chicken pox.

While refusing to commit anything on the company's plans to acquire the vaccine manufacturing facilities of Indian companies, both in public and private sectors, he said GSK has plans to consider at a later stage proposals to enter into alliances with Indian vaccine producers, some of who were now suffering with huge idle capacities.

"Various options are being kept open on acquisitions and alliances," he said.

"We are currently developing vaccines for diseases in developing countries, such as rota, malaria, TB, HIV, hepatitis-E, dengue and typhoid.

"Almost all these vaccines are now in phase-I clinical trials. We expect the trials to enter phase-II and phase-III stages in the next three-four years," Mr Dheri said.

Stating that the travellers were prone to certain serious diseases, Mr Dheri said, GSK was also planning to convince leading corporate hospitals in the country to set up exclusive clinics for travellers, which would serve as one-stop shops for all the vaccinations required for them.

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