The cooperation will optimize Bio Farma's innovation and performance, especially since it is aiming to produce affordable, international standard life science products, Bio Farma president director Honesti Basyir noted in a statement on Wednesday.
Bio Farma will act as an exclusive manufacturer for the global supply of recombinant factor VIII, and the company will exclusively sell and market the product in the ASEAN 6 territory and India.
The ASEAN 6 territory comprises Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Singapore, and Vietnam.
The cooperation between the two companies will take the form of co-development and technology transfer of recombinant factor VIII, which has been developed by the British company's experts who have more than 25 years of experience, he informed.
They have been involved in the biological product's development process starting from the upstream to downstream, he added.
Bio Farma is the largest pharmaceutical company in Southeast Asia, which actively develops vaccines and other life science products.
The company has a production capacity of up to 3.5 billion doses and is capable of producing 14 types of vaccine antigens for meeting domestic and global demand.
The latest cooperation is a stepping stone for Bio Farma for the production license and exclusive sales of recombinant factor VIII for the treatment of Hemophilia A in ASEAN 6 and India.
"This certainly will be beneficial nationally and globally," Basyir remarked.
Meanwhile, director of ProFactor Pharma David Brown said that the cooperation between Bio Farma and his company will improve services to the public, particularly hemophilia patients.
While 75 percent of such patients have been diagnosed, they have not yet received the medication due to its expensive price tag.
The recombinant technology will make the process of creating the blood product faster and allow it to be sold at an affordable price, he informed.
Recombinant factor VIII is indicated for treating bleeding in adults and children with Hemophilia A and other conditions.
Hemophilia is currently the most common hereditary blood clotting disorder in the world.
There are two types of hemophilia, Hemophilia A and Hemophilia B. Hemophilia A occurs due to factor VIII gene mutation, which causes factor VIII deficiency, while Hemophilia B happens due to factor IX deficiency.
Hemophilia A occurs in one out of 5 thousand to 10 thousand male infants. It also accounts for 80 percent of hemophilia cases.
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Translator: Ida Nurcahyani, Fadhli Ruhman
Editor: Azis Kurmala
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