The US firm, which provides cell-therapies development and manufacturing services on a contractual basis, said that the 30,000 sqft plant is being built to cater for growing drug industry demand.
The “freezer farm” unit at Allendale houses several liquid nitrogen (LN2) freezers, designed to provide PCT with storage capacity for customers’ developmental cell lines and candidate therapies.
PCT added that when fully operational later this year, after in-progress work is completed, the facility will support everything from the production of trial supplies to process development and commercial manufacturing.
The firm, which claims to be the only firm in the US to provide this type of specialist manufacturing capacity, already has one plant in New Jersey in Hackensack as well as one in Mountain View California which is currently being upgraded.
Company president Robert Preti said the firm is “excited to now be moving operations into and serving our clients from our third location, a new state-of-art facility which will allow us to combine our multiple east coast operations into one facility with increased capacity and significant room for continued expansion.”
US stem cell market worth $2.5bn by 2015
PCT’s suggestion that demand for cell-therapy manufacturing capacity is increasing fits with forecasts about the growth of the market over the next few years.
Industry analyst and RRY Publications president Robin Young recently said that, despite some difficulties during trials, 2009 had been a year of significant growth for cell therapies.
He added that: “Sales of stem cell therapies continue to grow extremely rapidly in the US,” and predicted that, in the US alone, they will generate revenue of $2.5bn a year by 2015.