Bangalore: Biotech major Biocon would launch its own branded recombinant human insulin formation - Insugen -- next month, a company official said today (Oct 20, 2004).

"It will be launched next month. We are finalising the date," the official said.

The company has already reached a global supply arrangement with Bristol-Myers Squibb in this context.

Bangalore-based Biocon's r-human insulin is manufactured using a proprietary Pichia expression system.

"We are looking at the world market (for this product). It's a production segment for the world. Global opportunity is much larger," the company's chairman and managing director Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw told reporters in Bangalore.

Mazumdar-Shaw said Insugen is the most clinically validated r-Human insulin in India. Biocon boasts of having Asia's largest insulin plant located in Bangalore.

Meanwhile, Biocon has commenced Phase IIB clinical trials of its drug TheraCIM, a humanised monoclonal antibody, for the treatment of head and neck cancers.

This drug has already received a fast track approval from the National Regulatory Authority of Cuba and 'Orphan Drug' status from European Agency for the Evaluation of Medicinal Products (EMEA) to treat cancer patients, Biocon said.