The contract manufacturing organisation (CMO) announced it had installed a 2,000L single-use reactor at the site this week, explaining that the investment was prompted by growing customer demand for this type of production.
Spokesman Marion Schrader told us: “We see an increasing need for production capacity in the mid-scale. The expansion will allow us to match the growing demands of our clients for all clinical phases and even for market supply and will increase our flexibility."
Schrader said Rentschler had opted for a single-use bioreactor system manufacturered by GE Healthcare’s Xcellerex unit, adding that the CMO works with a diverse range of mammalian cell lines.
“We are focused on the development and manufacturing of therapeutic proteins such as monoclonal antibodies, fusion proteins, cytokines or enzymes."
Biopharma customers
The single-use reactor becomes operational just a year after Rentschler expanded its biomanufacturing customer base, notably adding Apeiron’s neuroblastoma candidate monoclonal antibody (mAb) APN311 to its list of production contracts.
The German CMO replaced a previous unnamed contractor.
Rentschler has also committed €24m to install two 3,000 litre stainless steel bioreactors at the facility. The project, which was announced last July, is designed to up the CMO’s cell culture-based protein production capacity.
The steel bioreactors are expected to become operational in 2017.