Establishing a New Gene Therapy Drug Process Development Building and Expanding Product Facilities in Texas, USA
Establishing a New Gene Therapy Drug Process Development Building and Expanding Product Facilities in Texas, USA
TOKYO, November 14, 2019 -- FUJIFILM Corporation (President: Kenji Sukeno) will make a capital investment of approximately 13 billion yen in the gene therapy field, one of the priority areas for growth in the Contract Development and Manufacturing (CDMO) business, in order to further expand the contracted development and manufacturing business.
The investment will include the addition of dedicated gene therapy laboratories. The new building will be part of FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies (FDB) College Station, Texas campus. This site has been FDB’s Center of Excellence for gene therapy products since 2014. The laboratories will be approximately 6,000 square meters and will house state-of-the-art upstream, downstream and analytical development technologies. They will be operational in the fall of 2021.
Fujifilm has also announced that additional investments include expanding FDB’s the gene therapy cGMP capacity. This will include the addition of new clean rooms and the expansion of its upstream capacity with eight new 500 / 2,000L single use bioreactors. The site has been offering gene therapy fill finish services for both clinical and commercial products since early 2019. The first stage of the manufacturing expansion is expected to be completed and in operation by the spring of 2021.
The gene therapy market is a growing sector, which is expected to reach 4 trillion yen by 2025.
Fujifilm is aggressively pursuing growth strategies with both capital investment and in-house development of high-efficiency / high-productivity new technologies. Sales of 100 billion yen are expected for the CDMO business by the end of fiscal year 2021 ending March 2022. In August 2019, Fujifilm acquired the Biogen (Denmark) Manufacturing ApS facility, which added a significant increase in cell culture production capacity. Fujifilm is committed to supporting the delivery of new drugs with its customers through stable supply of high-quality products. The company strives to play a role in the creation of solutions to solve social issues such as responding to unmet medical needs and contributing to the overall progress of the healthcare industry.
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About Fujifilm
FUJIFILM Holdings Corporation, Tokyo, Japan, brings cutting edge solutions to a broad range of global industries by leveraging its depth of knowledge and fundamental technologies developed in its relentless pursuit of innovation. Its proprietary core technologies contribute to the various fields including healthcare, graphic systems, highly functional materials, optical devices, digital imaging and document products. These products and services are based on its extensive portfolio of chemical, mechanical, optical, electronic and imaging technologies. For the year ended March 31, 2019, the company had global revenues of $22 billion, at an exchange rate of 111 yen to the dollar. Fujifilm is committed to responsible environmental stewardship and good corporate citizenship. For more information, please visit: www.fujifilmholdings.com.
FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies (FDB) an industry-leading Biologics Contract Development and Manufacturing Organization (CDMO) with locations in Teesside, UK, RTP, North Carolina,College Station, Texas and Hillerod, Denmark. FDB has over thirty years of experience in the development and manufacturing of recombinant proteins, vaccines, monoclonal antibodies, among other large molecules, viral products and medical countermeasures expressed in a wide array of microbial, mammalian, and host/virus systems. The company offers a comprehensive list of services from cell line development using its proprietary pAVEway™ microbial and Apollo™ cell line systems to process development, analytical development, clinical and FDA-approved commercial manufacturing. FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies is a partnership between FUJIFILM Corporation and Mitsubishi Corporation. For more information, go to: www.fujifilmdiosynth.com
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