Biotechnology company Chiron Inc plans to make India a regional hub to supply rabies vaccines to other markets, officials said, and is also evaluating doing research and clinical trials in India.
The California-based company holds 51 per cent in a joint venture with Aventis Pharma that manufactures rabies vaccines at Ankleshwar in Gujarat.
It is the second facility where it makes rabies vaccines after Germany, Kevin Bryett, vice president of commercial operations, told reporters at a news conference in Bombay late on Wednesday.
"We have only just got our Ankleshwar plant approved by the World Health Organisation and our plan is that exports over the next three years will increase dramatically," he said.
Nearly 60,000 deaths are reported each year globally from the viral disease which is spread by the bite of an infected animal or even by a lick on broken skin.
Chiron data showed 8-9 million patients receive rabies vaccines annually.
"We have plans to supply to Asia, Africa, possibly Latin America and parts of Eastern Europe ex-Ankleshwar," Bryett said.
The management team of Chiron, which is the world's fifth-largest player in the vaccines field, is spending three days in India to evaluate its strategy in the country where it also sells Polio vaccines through a partner.
"We have decided India is a key market and we will invest in it," he said.
"We are at a stage where we are evaluating India as a base for development and clinical trials," he said, but emphasised the company was still at an exploratory stage.
This could include discussions with Indian academic research institutes, he said.
Chiron which had vaccines revenue of $400 million in 2001 aims to cross $600 million by 2006 by expanding to newer markets and introducing new products, president John Lambert said.
It currently has a six per cent share of the global vaccines market, with a 12 per cent market share in Europe but barely two percent in the United States.
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