Strides Pharma plans to disrupt high-volume insulin analogue space with in-house technology

Strides Pharma Science expects to disrupt the high-volume insulin and analogues space with high-speed filling technology developed in-house to deliver insulin.

“The high-speed filling technology is our in-house development and this is expected to disrupt the high-volume insulin and analogue space, especially in glargine, lispro and rh-Insulin,”R Ananthanarayanan, Managing Director and CEO, Strides Pharma Sciences, told BusinessLine.

“Our vaccine lines equipment installation is to start in December 2020 and a vaccine suite for multiple vaccine types will go on-stream from January 2021. This will give us high-speed filling lines with a yearly capacity of 500 million doses of liquid vaccines and 300 million doses of lyophilised vaccines,” he added.

The company’s production lines cater to vaccine types including viral vector, protein sub-unit, RNA and DNA. Currently, it is in the middle of discussions with global companies developing vaccines for Covid-19.

Stelis investment

“Strides’ commitment to invest additional $40m in Stelis Biopharma for a majority stake in the biotech business is ongoing in accordance with our commitment. We have already invested around $31million in it. Operationally, Stelis Biopharma is expected to break even in FY’22.

“Within Stelis, from the manufacturing capacity standpoint, out of our five manufacturing suites, four are now fully commercial, validated and available for business. From the IP (intellectual property) standpoint, we completed the EU filing for our first biosimilar PTH (Teriparatide) in Q2FY21. The product is currently under review. The US development for the product is on track. The US front-end for the product will be managed by Strides,” he said.

Talking about the Covid-19 impact on the company, Ananthanarayanan said: “It impacted inventory depletion on a few stock-keeping units at our front-ends and stock-outs for certain products, mainly in the US. It also resulted in lower order fulfilment, predominantly in other regulated markets including supplies to Australia.”

In the US, the company faced pricing pressure in select products and stock-outs for a few products posed certain challenges. “But overall, we are happy with the outcome in spite of the challenges we faced in the region this quarter. We had an 8 per cent q-o-q growth. Our outlook for the US market remains positive and we are confident of our growth trajectory. We see a great opportunity for us to continue building on our existing customer advocacy.

“The UK and some parts of Europe were impacted by lower pharmacy footfall, lower surgeries in hospitals, leading to lower prescription generations. But moving forward, the order book in these areas looks healthy and we are expecting a rebound in H2FY21.”