Emzor has signed an Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) manufacturing technology transfer and licensing agreement with India’s Mangalam Drugs and Organics Limited, to locally manufacture APIs in Nigeria and distribute in sub-Saharan Africa
Disclosing this, the Managing Director, Emzor, Dr Stella Okoli, said the agreement includes a co-development basis for manufacturing four APIs: artemether, lumefantrine, sulfadoxine and pyrimethamine, for the treatment of malaria, which continues to be a leading cause of death in the continent.
She said the agreement with Mangalam is an apt response to the complete dependency on external firms for APIs to sustain the regional pharmaceutical industry.
Okoli said it also represented an excellent opportunity for local manufacturing and backward integration that supports the firm’s vision to reduce the cost of drugs and the supply chain issues often affecting distribution and global response, particularly in times of crises, as recently experienced with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Okoli said, while malaria remains the leading cause of death in Nigeria, the selected APIs would provide chemo-preventive combination therapies for malaria in pregnant women, as well as treatment for adults and children.
She added that Mangalam would provide in-house developed technology for manufacturing antimalarial Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients, as well as consultation and relevant designs for setting up a world class API manufacturing facility compliant with World Health Organisation (WHO) standards in Nigeria.
She stated that her company is at an advanced stage in the process of submitting a dossier to WHO-prequalification for Maldox, a project supported by Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) with funding from UNITAID.
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