Danilo P. Manayaga, Servac Philippines Corp. (SPC) president and chief executive officer, said the company can put up the facility in eight months after the release of the DBP loan. This will enable the Philippines to substitute imported ARS upon the company’s compliance for quality standards required by World Health Organization and Bureau of Food and Drug.

"We need a GMP-certified facility to produce an anti-rabies serum that is injectible to human. Locally, there is no competitor for this. It’s 100 percent imported," Manayaga said in an interview.

The Philippines imports anti-rabies serum from France while such vaccines are also produced in Korea, US, and Europe.

SPC has been able to come up with a unique technology on the production of ARS, scientifically known as equine rabies immunoglobulin (ERIG), after Manayaga’s family business has been engaged for the last 10 to 15 years in the supply of chromatography, an equipment on an advanced purification process that gives ARS production several advantages to human health.

Chromatography produces highly-purified proteins compared to the precipitation used traditionally in purification. The same process has applications in anti-cancer drugs, insulin, and recombinant genetically-engineered products.

The technology itself enables the company to produce the ARS at a rate five times more than conventional systems. Chromatography, developed in Sweden, is now produced by GE Healthcare Biosciences.

Manayaga said that given this edge, the Philippines can sell the technology’s license to China, India, Africa, and Latin America which currently do not have their own ARS process and which has alarming rabies infection cases.

The ARS comes from antibodies produced by horses for which SPC now maintains 31 heads in its farm in Gingoog City, Misamis Oriental.

But the company needs 200 horses to produce an ARS requirement at a rate of 400,000 cases per year that is observed in the Philippines. This amounts to a gross value of P2 billion market at P5,000 each case. The government itself is the biggest market for the vaccine with a million budget per year.

The Department of Health-attached Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM) has so far successfully tested the ARS technology. The company has been ready to use the technology two years ago, but it needs a venture capitalist to put up the P60 million counterpart for the DBP loan.