Fujifilm Corporation has announced an $850m (¥90bn yen) investment package to accelerate the growth of its core bio CDMO subsidiary, Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies. The CDMO specialises in the development and manufacturing of recombinant proteins, vaccines, monoclonal antibodies, among other large molecules, in addition to viral products expressed in an array of microbial, mammalian, and host/virus systems.
Fujifilm Corporation is investing in the CDMO’s contract development and manufacturing to increase capacity to meet the market demands for biopharmaceuticals. Today’s announcement brings the total investments made by the company into its subsidiary since 2011 to $5.5bn (¥600bn yen).
The investment will significantly increase the company’s manufacturing capacity. The expansions will double cell culture production for recombinant vaccines in the United States. In the United Kingdom, gene therapy production is planned to be increased ten-fold, cell culture capacity will be tripled and microbial fermentation output facility will be doubled.
The United Kingdom cell culture expansion will also include cGMP capacity for continuous manufacturing. Process and analytical development capacity is planned to be strategically added as part of the investment. The expansions are scheduled to begin operating by late 2023. Further details on the capabilities of the new and expanded facilities will be disclosed upon conclusion of initial engineering studies that are currently ongoing.
Market growth for CDMO services, Fujifilm says, is expected to continue owing to increasing demand for biotherapeutics such as antibodies, gene therapy treatments and vaccines against new infectious diseases such as COVID-19.
