THE pharmaceutical industry in Singapore has moved into higher gear, with the opening of a state-of-the-art $600 million GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) vaccine plant in Tuas.

The plant will be able to produce biologic drugs, which use natural products like blood or bacteria, and Singapore is one of the few countries in the world which has this capability.

The new plant - GSK chief executive officer Andrew Witty calls it 'possibly the best vaccine facility anywhere in the world' - will manufacture a new drug that has shown promise in preventing some of the most common lethal diseases around the globe such as meningitis, pneumonia and blood poisoning, which kill about one million toddlers each year.

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