Boeh Mannheim Expands Biotech Role

German company Boehringer Mannheim is to expand its biotechnology rolein Germany with the construction of a new "biologics" complex at its Penzberg site in Bavaria, which it says is one of the largest and most modern biotechnology production plants in Europe.

The completion of the project is scheduled for 1998, and the complex will produce active biological substances for both diagnosis and drug therapy. The cost of the project is some 150 million Deutschemarks ($88.32 million).

BM said the extension of both the indications and the market for the first of the company's genetically-engineered drugs for the treatment of anemia, Recormon (erythropoietin), has made expansion of production necessary.