Plans are afoot to expand Singapore's capacity in the manufacture of pharmaceutical products as the world gets closer to finding a vaccine for Covid-19.
Global life-science company Thermo Fisher Scientific, for instance, last month announced plans to set up a sterile fill-and-finish facility for therapeutics and vaccines here.
"This facility will have the capability and capacity to address the demand in the region, and also enhance Singapore's ability to respond to future pandemics," said Ms Goh Wan Yee, senior vice-president and head for healthcare at the Economic Development Board (EDB).
In June, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said Singapore intends to offer fill-and-finish contract manufacturing services to vaccine developers.
Fill-and-finish manufacturing involves contamination-free filling of drugs into containers such as vials or syringes.
It plays a critical role in scaling up vaccine production for populations as many biopharmaceutical products are fragile and prone to contamination.
Ms Goh said that vaccine manufacturing is not new to Singa-pore as it is similar to biologics manufacturing.
British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), for example, has a vaccines drug substance manufacturing plant in Tuas that has been operational since 2011, she added.
GSK currently has three Covid-19 vaccine collaborations in clinical trials worldwide, and a spokesman for the firm told The Straits Times that all three are expected to go into late-stage human trials by the year end.
She added that more than one vaccine would likely be needed to tackle the pandemic, and said the firm was hoping that there would be a number of successful vaccines developed with GSK's pandemic adjuvant technology. Adjuvants are an ingredient used to boost the human immune response.
GSK's plant in Tuas produces a different ingredient - conjugates - for its pneumococcal conju-gate vaccines.
The manufacture and fill-and-finish adjuvant production for use in Covid-19 vaccines will be done at sites in Britain, the United States, Canada and Europe, said the GSK spokesman.
But GSK is still a major contributor to Singapore's biomedical sciences industry, with more than $1.5 billion in investments.
For instance, other than its vaccine manufacturing facility, it has two global manufacturing supply sites in Singapore.
EDB's Ms Goh said the Republic is home to leading pharmaceutical companies that manufacture a wide range of products, from small molecules and biologics to therapeutics and vaccines, for the global market.
"These companies have chosen to set up strategic production sites here to leverage Singapore's base of skilled talent, global connectivity and technological capabilities," she added.
Last year, Singapore's pharmaceutical manufacturing industry accounted for $21.9 billion in total output and employed about 8,600 workers.
"EDB will continue to grow the biopharmaceutical manufacturing sector to undertake activities in new technologies and modalities as part of larger efforts to further diversify Singapore's manufacturing base," she added.
Audrey Tan
