Battling To Build A Biotech

Nothing comes easy for BF Biosciences, Pakistan’s first biotech company. It faced a two-year struggle to get an electric connection installed at the site of its new factory, says Osman Khalid Waheed, the company’s chief executive officer. Meanwhile, Waheed and his colleagues had to install 1.2 megawatts of diesel-fueled generators—enough to power 800 typical American homes—to run the equipment to build their factory. When they ordered a lyophilizer—“basically a freeze dryer the size of a small room,” Waheed explains—it got held up for eight months in Shanghai. “When they saw it was headed to Pakistan, I presume they automatically thought of biological weapons,” he says. After providing extensive documentation about the company, and a letter from the local police attesting to Waheed’s good character, the equipment got released and they were able to go ahead with the factory’s construction. The Taliban insurgency slowed things down as well, albeit indirectly. A Spanish firm building the factory—hired to ensure the facility would meet U.S. and European Union specifications—had problems getting its workers insured because of the ongoing conflict.

But now, BF Biosciences’s first trial batches of biologics—protein-based drugs—are brewing. They are the culmination of a partnership that started in 2002, between Ferozsons Laboratories, one of Pakistan’s biggest and oldest pharmaceutical companies, and Argentina’s Bagó Laboratories. The two companies have so far pitched in a total of $7.7 million, with Ferozsons holding an 80-percent stake.

Their initial products will all be off-patent biologicals. For instance, BF Biosciences will make interferon alpha to treat hepatitis C, which infects about 10 million Pakistanis, largely due to widespread reuse of syringes and from unclean razors used by roadside barbers. These proteins have to be kept cold at all times to avoid degradation. Maintaining this cold chain, from factory to patient, “is a challenge here in Pakistan, given the state of infrastructure,” with frequent power outages, Waheed says.
BF Biosciences is also branching out, manufacturing a drug called Filgrastim, which stimulates a type of white blood cells. The drug can be used to treat cancer patients whose immune systems are knocked down by chemotherapy, by helping boost their immune response to infections.

Although BF Biosciences has made its first trial batches of drugs, the company faces more hurdles. “Pakistan is a highly regulated market,” Waheed says. “The price of every pharmaceutical product is controlled by the Ministry of Health, and the industry has not been given a price increase since December 2001.”

While Waheed hopes to market products around the world, he is realistic about the challenges ahead. “It hasn’t been easy,” he says, “but first entrants shouldn’t expect it to be easy.”