Jinwon Life Sciences Subsidiary VGXI Holds Groundbreaking Ceremony for New Plasmid Production Facility

Groundbreaking ceremony for VGXI, a subsidiary of GeneOne Life Science's new production facility. In the front row, center is CEO Park Young-geun; to his right is Kevin Brady, U.S. House Representative; to his left is Ahn Myung-soo, Consul General of the Republic of Korea in Houston; VGXI employees and construction company officials. November 10, 2020.
[Photo by GeneOne Life Science]

[Asia Economy Reporter Jang Hyowon] Genewell Life Sciences announced on the 11th that its subsidiary VGXI, a cGMP (current Good Manufacturing Practice) contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) company, held a groundbreaking ceremony at the production facility site established in Conroe, Texas, USA.

VGXI has begun construction of the first new production facility to respond to the explosive demand for plasmids used in gene therapies, novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccines, and RNA vaccines.

A company official stated, “Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the groundbreaking ceremony was attended by a limited number of people, including VGXI and construction company officials, U.S. House Representative Kevin Brady, Consul General Ahn Myungsoo of the Republic of Korea Consulate General in Houston, Texas, and Tem Duke Coon, Mayor of Conroe, Texas.”

The new production facility being built at Deison Technology Park is planned to serve as the headquarters. The two-story facility will include a quality evaluation laboratory, purification and filling, packaging equipment, raw material warehouses, spaces necessary for process support, as well as offices and convenience facilities. It is scheduled to be completed in the fourth quarter of next year, and its initial production capacity in the first quarter of 2022 will be five times the current capacity.

The first newly constructed production facility is designed to broadly meet diverse customer needs from early clinical trials to commercial supply by having multiple continuous manufacturing zones to ensure flexibility. It will also include a micro-process zone for small-scale production and dedicated manufacturing zones for DNA and RNA-based biopharmaceutical customers that can be used at all clinical development stages.

Park Younggeun, CEO of Genewell Life Sciences, said, “VGXI is a global leader in contract manufacturing supplying high-quality plasmids, which are used as raw materials or products in the rapidly growing gene therapy, DNA vaccine, and RNA vaccine production sectors. Since supply cannot meet demand, once this production facility is completed, it will resolve the backlog of demand and enable us to respond to future demand, leading to a full-scale increase in sales and improvement in profitability.”