Industries and IT Minister K.T.Rama Rao on Tuesday inaugurated and laid foundation for five projects, including Bio-Pharma Hub, in Hyderabad’s Genome Valley that together are expected to attract ₹1,100 crore investment and create about 3,000 jobs.
Laying foundation for B-Hub, the Minister said it is a first-of-its-kind growth phase centre and biopharma scale-up manufacturing facility being developed on public-private partnership mode under a unique initiative of Telangana government and the Centre’s department of Biotechnology.
B-Hub will support small and medium sized biopharma companies in conducting proof-of-concept studies in its 200L single use scale-up facility and cater to research activities within the 1.5 lakh sq ft area while attracting talent and fostering innovation. It will house a state-of-the-art bioprocess scale-up facility, research and development lab spaces, collaboration modules and Grade ‘A’ training rooms.
Speaking at the event, he said amid its growing prominence, Genome Valley is running out of space. India’s first systemically developed R&D cluster, it is now home to more than 200 companies, including some of the largest vaccine developers.
Genome Valley has more plug and play multi-tenanted labspace than all the clusters in country. “Today, we are further widening this gap,” the Minister said in a tweet. He said Hyderabad has the largest multi-tenanted labspace in the country and one of the highest in the region – housing more than 3 million sq ft at international standards. Another 2 million sq ft is getting added in Genome Valley, including 0.9 million sq ft that has been launched,” he said.
One of the facilities inaugurated by Mr.Rao was the new process development facility of Yapan Bio, a startup in which Piramal Pharma holds a strategic minority stake. “With this expansion, Yapan has enhanced its ability to support end-to-end development and manufacturing of RNA, DNA and gene therapy products starting from plasmids,” a release from Piramal said.
Piramal Pharma chairperson Nandini Piramal said “the new facility is part of our $8 million expansion plan for Yapan Bio.”
In a media interaction, the senior leadership of life sciences infrastructure and cluster developer Rx Propellant said the company is developing the 9 lakh sq ft of additional lab space in Genome Valley.
Managing director Vishal Goel said the company has already developed 5 lakh sq ft of lab space in Genome Valley entailing an investment of ₹500 crore. In Phase II, which the Minister launched, the estimated investment would be ₹900 crore and comprises seven independent projects — Innopolis, Genopolis, Touchstone, ARX, Nextopolis, GV1 and B-Hub.
The company said it will invest an additional ₹2,000 cr to build a cumulative portfolio over 100 lakh sq ft of lab space over the next five years across Hyderabad and other major life sciences hubs of India.
Another facility inaugurated by Mr.Rao was GV Research Platform’s suite of preclinical research services. GVRP is a preclinical CRO and has set up 28,000 sq ft commercial breeding and testing facility. It is being established with an investment of ₹40 crore and provide jobs to around 100 people across Veterinary Science, Toxicology, Pharmacology and Analytical Research. Over the next three years, the firm plans to invest an additional $10 million in Genome Valley to introduce complementary research areas with the work force increasing to 200.
Published - October 19, 2022 12:41 am IST
