Earlier this year in March, Thermo Fisher Scientific announced that it would invest $475m (€438m) into its biopharma business, with a focus on providing services for the development of cell and gene therapies.
Last week, the company revealed that a significant chunk, $180m, would be apportioned to the creation of a commercial manufacturing site for viral vectors.
The site will be built in Massachusetts, US, and will cover 290,000-square-feet, with projections for the work to be completed in 2022.
The Plainville site will create in excess of 200 jobs and will support the development and manufacture of gene therapies and vaccines, the company stated.
In addition to the doubling the company’s capacity to produce viral vectors, Michel Lagarde, EVP of Thermo Fisher, noted that the project is part of its aim to ensure that customers do not need to work with other contract development and manufacturing organizations (CDMOs), as pat of its ‘start here, stay here’ strategy.
He added that the growing pipeline of cell and gene therapies has highlight the need customers have for access to ‘surge capacity’, with capacity bottlenecks being a growing headache for companies trying to develop such therapies.
The new site will be comprised of laboratory and production suites, with warehousing and office space also on-site.