The firm’s strategy of offering its clients extended biologics production has received a boost as the doors of the new facility in Madison, Wisconsin opened last Friday.
Barry Littlejohns, President of Catalent’s Biologics business said in a statement the facility will serve customers via “improved delivery of integrated services in the areas of biologic development and manufacturing.”
Furthermore, he stressed the importance of the facility’s “extensive application of single-use technology” which “reduces the risk of cross contamination and gives [Catalent] huge flexibility and scale.”
The ex-GE Healthcare facility has been in development since 2011 and will now provide 100,000 sq ft of cGMP production from 10L up to 1000L, and non-GMP production up to 250L.
Furthermore, all 89 employees at Catalent’s current biologics plant in Middleton, Wisconsin will be relocated and a further 100 staff are expected to be employed at the new site.
Catalent’s biologics offering comes just weeks after the firm announced it was to enter the field of antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) production employing the SMARTag technology it has licensed from Redwood Bioscience.
With the opening of the new facility, the SMARTag proprietary technology and Catalent’s own GPEx cell line expression system, Catalent’s biologics capabilities will - according to Littlejohns - be quadrupled “with solutions for even the most difficult to express proteins” available to its customers.