The Colombian company VaxThera biotechnology inaugurated this Wednesday in the municipality of Rionegro (Antioquia), close to Medellína vaccine and biological production plant that will have the capacity to manufacture 100 million doses annually and will enter into operations at the beginning of 2025.
This “citadel” of 35,000 square meters It has cutting-edge technologies and 6 operational and administrative buildingswhere they will package and finish biologicals in liquid formats of single-dose and multi-dose vials, as explained by the president of VaxThera, Jorge Emilio Osorio.
“We want to recover the sovereignty that we lost to being able to produce biological products from Colombia for the world,” Osorio told reporters, who described the completion of this construction as a “milestone” that can position the country as a scientific research hub for Latin America and the world.
He also specified that there is a process of cleaning and validating the plant with national and international entities so that it has the “best standards” and can begin. production in the first quarter of 2025.
He scientific and operational vice president of VaxThera, Juan Pablo Hernándeztold EFE that the detailed designs were carried out by Indian engineer Jakesh Jayaprash, a “very experienced person, who has designed plants throughout India, the mecca of vaccine production.”
This technological complex, inhabited by 500 employees and where vaccines and therapies will be produced on the viral vector and mDNA platforms, it has a power building, another for quality control and warehouse, one for filling, one for solid waste and a last one for employee well-being.
Address a pandemic
Hernández indicated that with a team made up of doctors, biologists, microbiologists and engineers, among others, they will begin to produce vaccines for tropical diseases, in addition to influenza, pentavalent and polio, “all the vaccines we need for Colombia’s immunization plan“.
However, once they meet national demand, in the future the company plans to export 80 or 90% of its production to “help” the region and later countries in Africa and Asia.
“We want to export to the whole world, we already know that a pandemic has no borders,” said Hernández and assured: “If we have to face a pandemic, we are capable of making 400 million doses in a year. In terms of the country, that is producing all the vaccines for Colombia in a month and a half.”
VaxThera, created to autonomously respond to emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases or a future pandemic such as covid-19, inaugurated in 2023 in Medellín a vaccine and biological research headquarters with a laboratory in which researchers trained at the University of Wisconsin and the National University of Colombia work.
With the construction of its plant, the biotechnology company also plans to strengthen the transfer of knowledge and technology with countries such as United States, Belgium, India, China, South Africa, Brazil and Argentina.
“This is a very big milestone for our country. We are taking a very big step towards the recovery of health independence because The country lost the capacity to produce vaccines and biologicals more than 22 years ago“declared the director of the plant, Juan Noreña.
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