WuXi Biologics, part of WuXi AppTec, a contract service provider, has opened a new commercial-scale cGMP biologics perfusion manufacturing facility in Wuxi City, China. The company announced plans to build the facility in April 2015 and invested $150 million. The first phase of construction is complete and the facility has commenced operation.

The new facility accommodates two 1000-liter disposable bioreactors for perfusion processes. The added capacity will support WuXi’s biologics commercial manufacturing pipeline. The new commercial biologics manufacturing facility will also address the needs of Chinese companies as a marketing authorization holder system is currently being piloted.

The facility is part of recent investments by WuXi AppTech in biomanufacturing and related services.In January 2016, the company started construction of an integrated biologics solution center at the company’s headquarters in Shanghai, China. The company plans to invest a total of $120 million in this dedicated, 250,000-square-foot facility, which will be operational in 2017 and accommodate 800 scientists. The biologics development center of the project will use WuXi’s proprietary Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cell line platform to develop fed-batch and perfusion processes. The co-located cGMP clinical manufacturing facilities will support four concurrent campaigns using 3 x 2000-L fed-batch and 2 x 500-L perfusion bioreactors.

In March 2015, the company announced the construction a new, 145,000-square-foot cGMP facility in Philadelphia for the manufacture of cell-therapy products. This facility is designed for cell-therapy products that contain viral vectors such as chimeric antigen receptor T cell (CAR T cell) therapies. CAR T cells are T cells harvested from a patient’s body, engineered to target specific cancers, and then reintroduced into the body.The new facility is WuXi’s third cell-therapy manufacturing facility and was scheduled to become operational by mid-2016 to provide manufacturing capability and capacity for clinical studies and commercial supply. The new facility expands upon WuXi’s existing 16,000-square-foot cGMP cell therapy manufacturing facility as well as a 45,000-square-foot facility for the manufacturing of allogeneic and autologous cell-based therapeutics.

Source: Wuxi AppTec