Genentech Plans Manufacturing Facility in Singapore

South San Francisco, CA (Mar. 28)-Genentech, Inc. (www.gene.com) announced plans to invest $140 million in a 1000L manufacturing facility in Singapore.

Construction on the new facility is slated to begin in the second quarter of 2007, and the company expects it to be fully licensed by 2010.  The new site will manufacture “Lucentis,” Genentech’s treatment for neovascular (wet) age-related macular degeneration, which received approval from the US Food and Drug Administration in June 2006.

Singapore recently has proven popular with other drug giants. GlaxoSmithKline (London, www.gsk.com) is building a $190-million vaccine plant there. In August 2006, Lonza (Basel, Switzerland, www.lonza.com) announced plans to build a $250-million large-scale mammalian cell-culture plant in Singapore.