Hyderabad, Jul 21 (IANS): Hyderabad's vaccine capacity is to increase by more than 50 per cent to 14 billion doses, the highest for any region in the world, as the city-based Biological E on Thursday announced their expansion plans.

The vaccine maker will invest more than Rs 1,800 crore in its facilities in Genome Valley.

This will cement further Hyderabad's position as 'vaccine capital of the world'.

Hyderabad currently accounts for one-third of global vaccine production with a capacity of about 9 billion doses per annum. This investment from Biological E will enhance the capacity by 5 billion doses increasing the cumulative capacity to about 14 billion doses each year.

The expansion is primarily targeted to ramp up the manufacturing of vaccines along with generic Injectables and R&D.

This expansion is expected to create more than 2,500 new jobs.

The announcement was made after Industry Minister K.T. Rama Rao's meeting with leadership of Biological E Managing Director Mahima Datla.

The company said this investment would be focused on manufacturing of Janssen Covid vaccine, MR vaccine, PCVA vaccine, Typhoid vaccine, Covid vaccine, Tetanus Toxide Ampoules, IPV vaccine and Pertussis vaccine, biological APIs and formulations.

All of these activities will be located in Genome Valley, which is India's first organised cluster for Life Sciences R&D and Clean Manufacturing activities, with world-class infrastructure facilities in the form of Industrial/Knowledge Parks, Special Economic Zones (SEZs), Multi-tenanted dry and wet laboratories and incubation facilities.

Genome Valley is home to more than 200 companies with a scientific workforce of about 15,000 professionals including presence of the marquee global names like Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline, Ferring Pharma, Chemo, DuPont, Ashland, United States Pharmacopeia, Lonza amongst many others.

Biological E has secured funding from US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) to the tune of $50 million to expand the company's capacity to produce Covid-19 vaccines.

It has also developed one of the indigenous vaccines for Covid-19 in the country - Corbevax. The vaccine has also received nod from the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) for emergency use authorisation for the 5-12-year age group.