Fujifilm is making an investment of more than $2bn to establish a large-scale cell culture production site in the United States to accelerate the growth of its biopharmaceutical CDMO business.
Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies will operate the new facility. The facility will offer large-scale cell culture manufacturing of bulk drug substance with eight 20000 L bioreactors, with the potential to expand and add a further 24 based on market demand. In addition to drug substance manufacture, the facility will also provide commercial scale, automated fill-finish and assembly, packaging and labelling services. It will be built within the vicinity of an existing Fujifilm site, and is scheduled to begin operations in the spring of 2025.
“The United States is the world’s biggest market for biopharmaceuticals. I am pleased that through this large investment in the U.S.A we are able to support the development and manufacturing of new drugs that can help fulfill unmet medical needs”, said Kenji Sukeno, President of Fujifilm Corporation. “Fujifilm will continue to promote human health and support the progress of the healthcare industry by using our cutting-edge technology and advanced facilities to provide a stable supply of high quality biopharmaceuticals.”
In June 2020, Fujifilm invested $928m in Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies’ Hillerød, Denmark site to double its large-scale cell culture manufacturing capacity and add commercial scale drug product production capabilities.
“We are leveraging our strengths in process development and manufacturing for a wide range of biopharmaceuticals such as antibodies, recombinant proteins, gene therapies and vaccines,” said Martin Meeson, CEO at Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies. “We are uniquely placed to support our customer supply chain needs providing end to end services from small to large scale bulk drug substance production, through to fill-finish and final packing.”