Panecea Biotec surges on signing agreement for H1N1 flu vaccine
Panecea Biotec has signed an advance market agreement with the government to manufacture Pandyflu, the company???s H1N1 flu vaccine.
Panecea is currently trading at Rs 195.70, up by 7.10 points or 3.76% from its previous closing of Rs 188.60 on the BSE.
The scrip opened at Rs 192.70 and has touched a high of Rs 200 while its low remains its opening. So far 5,845 shares were traded on the counter.
The BSE group ???B??? stock of face value Rs 1 has touched a 52 week high of Rs 234.90 on January 20, 2010 and a 52 week low of Rs 52.00 on March 18, 2009.
The promoters holding in the company as per December 2009 stood at 68.73%, FII and DII held 13.18% and 3.78% while the others were holding 14.31%.
Panacea Biotec, India???s second largest biotechnology company is expected to launch ‘Pandyflu’, its indigenously produced vaccine against the H1N1 virus (Swine flu). The company is developing the conventional inactivated split virion vaccine using egg-based technology.
In view of recent onset of influenza A (H1N1) pandemic, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India (MoH-FW) has encouraged indigenous development of influenza A (H1N1) and / or other pandemic flu vaccines.
MoHFW held a series of meetings with indigenous vaccine manufacturers to assess their capacity and willingness to develop, manufacture and supply the product. The ministry recently entered into this Advance Market Commitment (AMC) Agreement with Panacea Biotec and other two manufacturers at Delhi.
Panacea Biotec has set up a state-of-the-art BSL2 level manufacturing unit with BSL3 practices on its sprawling campus spread over 75 acres of land at Lalru, Punjab for manufacturing Pandyflu vaccine. This facility has an annual capacity to manufacture 45 million doses of the vaccine.
The company has developed a unique virus purification strategy that has yielded satisfactory results in trail runs. The company used the seed virus to produce three consecutive batches of the vaccine using embryonated chicken eggs. To develop this technology, the company had procured a classical reassortant virus from CDC, Atlanta in June 2009. With unprecedented speed, the company has completed all key steps in development process of H1N1 vaccine.
Panacea Biotec has been working very closely with MoHFW, DCGI and the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) to develop this vaccine in an accelerated manner. It is expected that process of licensing with Government of India will be over by July 2010. The company is hopeful that Pandyflu vaccine would be available by April 2010 for emergency use authorisation, subject to EUA clearance by DCGI on completion of Phase I trials.
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