A new investment in Sachsen-Anhalt is announced to build a pilot facility to support healthcare related research & development and the manufacturing of proteins for diagnostic use.

Con­cep­tu­al image of the new R&D facil­i­ty

Den­ka Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (head­quar­ters: Chuo-ku, Tokyo; pres­i­dent: Man­abu Yamamo­to; here­inafter, “Den­ka”) announces that Icon Genet­ics GmbH (here­inafter, ”Icon Genet­ics”), a ful­ly owned sub­sidiary of Den­ka, con­clud­ed a land pur­chase agree­ment with the city of Halle, Sach­sen-Anhalt in Ger­many on March 11, 2020. The land will be used for the con­struc­tion of a new facil­i­ty as part of Denka’s health­care busi­ness enhance­ment.

Den­ka cur­rent­ly sup­ports Icon Genet­ics’ devel­op­ment of a norovirus vac­cine can­di­date and the man­u­fac­tur­ing of pro­teins for diag­nos­tic use. These pro­grams are enabled by Icon Genet­ics’ pro­pri­etary, plant-based mag­nI­CON^® plat­form tech­nol­o­gy. To sat­is­fy the need for expan­sion of Icon Genet­ics’ capac­i­ty, Den­ka is pur­chas­ing approx­i­mate­ly 50,000 m² of land to build a pilot plant in the Wein­berg Cam­pus Tech­no­log­i­cal Park in Halle, near Icon Genet­ics’ cur­rent facil­i­ty. The new facil­i­ty will serve as the cen­ter for Icon Genet­ics’ research, devel­op­ment and pro­duc­tion activ­i­ties.

Den­ka posi­tioned its health­care-relat­ed busi­ness­es as one of the three pri­or­i­ty fields in the Den­ka Val­ue-Up Man­age­ment Plan and is con­sol­i­dat­ing man­age­ment resources in this field. Through this invest­ment, Den­ka will accel­er­ate Icon Genet­ics’ new busi­ness and prod­uct devel­op­ment pro­grams to address pub­lic health chal­lenges, includ­ing the devel­op­ment of vac­cines against the high­ly con­ta­gious norovirus, for which no vac­cine or spe­cif­ic ther­a­py cur­rent­ly exists.

Overview of Icon Genet­ics