Gujarat firm to set up plasma isolation facility

Ahmedabad, Jan 22 (IANS) Celestial Biologicals Ltd (CBL), an associated company of Intas Biopharmaceuticals, and GE Healthcare, the $17-billion healthcare business of General Electric Co, will set up India’s first plasma fractionation facility here, Intas said Thursday.

The two companies signed the agreement at the Vibrant Gujarat Global Investors Summit 2009, and the facility will be fully functional by early 2010, said Intas managing director Urmish Chudgar.

Human plasma, a liquid component of blood, has many life-saving proteins that can be isolated and used to make medicines. The process of extracting and purifying these proteins is known as plasma fractionation.
India collects over 7 million units of blood every year, but 60 percent of the blood plasma collected goes waste because there is no facility available in India for fractionation, Chudgar said.

Fractionated proteins are used to treat life-threatening conditions caused by trauma, congenital deficiencies, immunologic disorders, and infections, he added.

CBL and GE Healthcare will jointly set up a pilot plasma fractionation facility of 40,000 litres capacity for at least four products at CBL’s existing facility. The companies would later scale up the production facility to 300,000 litres.