Thermo Fisher Scientific is investing more than $475 million in commercial capabilities and capacity in 2020 for biologics, cell and gene therapies, and drug products. This investment, in addition to those made in 2019, brings the total investment over two years to approximately $800 million across the company’s pharma services business.

In biologics, Thermo Fisher plans to open a new Bioprocessing Collaboration Center in St. Louis in July 2020, where multiple Thermo Fisher businesses will jointly develop bioprocessing products, workflows, and services. The company completed a $50-million expansion at its St. Louis site to double production capacity for biological drug-substance development and commercial manufacturing. 

In addition, the company will open a new cell-therapy development and manufacturing collaboration center in Princeton, New Jersey to combine pharma services and biosciences expertise from across the broader Thermo Fisher network. A new cell-therapy facility will come on line at the same location later this year (2020). Following its $1.7-billion acquisition of Brammer Bio, a cell- and gene-therapy CDMO in 2019, Thermo Fisher has expanded its viral vector development and manufacturing capabilities by opening a new site in Lexington, Massachusetts and expanding sites in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Alachua, Florida.

In its steril fill-finish services, Thermo Fisher is making investments to scale up its sterile drug development and commercial capabilities to cover a range of dosage forms for sterile injectables.

In addition on the drug-product side, the company is now providing commercial spray-drying capabilities for molecules with solubility challenges. The company is also providing continuous manufacturing capabilities and new commercial packaging capabilities with smaller production runs or for oral solid dose and sterile drug products requiring flexibility. The company’s new quality-control lab provides analytical instrument, automation, and informatics capabilities to integrate and automate workflows by combining capabilities across the company.

Source: Thermo Fisher Scientific