Minister Marcourt prepares to open the new center. The rest of this feature can be read in Animal Pharm Issue 635

Pfizer Animal Health has opened a new €30m ($47.7m) vaccine development center in Belgium.

The facility, Pfizer’s first such center for animal vaccines in Europe, will enable the company to research and develop new products for volume production elsewhere, as well as commercializing and manufacturing small runs of niche products.

The new 330 sq m development center has the capability to carry out all the necessary formulation, filling and lyophilization processes needed for the manufacture of vaccines. It is one tenth the scale of a full size manufacturing plant. Its closeness to the main plant will help technology transfers and enable a rapid scale up of promising products.

The center is located within the company’s existing Global Manufacturing site at Louvain-la-Neuve, just outside Brussels. The official opening ceremony was performed by the minister of economics and employment for the Belgian region of Wallonia, Jean-Claude Marcourt.

“The unit will help Pfizer to speed up the development, registration and marketing of new vaccine products. It will be used to produce pilot batches of product to support registration processes, for clinical assays and to generate real time stability data,” says site leader Rudy Rosolen.

“The decision to set up this development center on the same site where these new products will be manufactured is a strategic one,” Mr Rosolen said at the official opening. “It makes it possible for the production site to become more involved in developing new products, enables it to happen more quickly, and strengthens the interaction between this plant and Pfizer’s other research and development departments in England and the US.”

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President of Pfizer Animal Health Juan Ramon Alaix, also speaking at the opening ceremony, said: “Animal health is a growing economic area. It is worth $16bn worldwide and $5.5bn in Europe. Pfizer Animal Health now supports veterinarians treating animals in more than 90 countries worldwide. As the leading animal health company, we play a vital role in ensuring the safety of the food supply, as well as the health, welfare and longevity of companion animals.”

Pfizer Animal Health’s R&D pipeline has 75 active programs of research, continued Mr Ramon Alaix, and a similar number in the early stages of development. The company has also invested in a new animal genetics business to complement its portfolio. “New vaccines, new technology, new genetic tests and markers and new prescription medicines,” Mr Ramon Alaix stressed. “I believe that the R&D portfolio will help Pfizer to better predict disease in individual animals, helping veterinarians to target medicines to the animals that need it most.”

Speaking to Animal Pharm after the event, Albert Bourla, president of Pfizer Animal Health for Europe, Africa and the Middle East, said that the investment for the vaccine development center was market driven....

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