AProgen, a Korean biotherapeutics developer, has scaled up its production capacity to pose as a formidable challenge to global biosimilar names Samsung Biologics and Celltrion.

The company said on Tuesday it completed the addition of two production lines, increasing total output capacity to 240,000 liters of culture fluid per cycle. The equivalent capacity for Samsung Biologics and Celltrion is 360,000 liters and 190,000 liters, respectively.

AProgen said it will be able to operate total four lines concurrently to produce up to 240,000 liters of culture fluid needed to manufacture biosimilars.

Culture fluid containing nutrients needed to grow plants, bacteria, and cells is used to produce biotherapeutic proteins.

AProgen’s latest facilities employ a perfusion process to produce culture fluid, different from fed-batch systems used by Samsung Biologics or Celltrion. Perfusion manufacturing provides much higher levels of productivity than a fed-batch process, which means more cost effectiveness.

AProgen said it has different cell culture systems from Samsung Biologics and Celltrion, but productivity is almost equal to the two companies.

Each of the four production lines in the AProgen plant is equipped with a 2,500-liter reactor for continuous culture, which varies from product to product, but culture fluid can be recovered for an average of 20 days once quality culture begins for biosimilar production.

By Kim Si-gyun and Minu Kim

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