Avantor Opens New Collaborative Research Center in New Jersey

Avantor, a supplier of APIs and raw materials, has opened a new research center in Bridgewater, New Jersey, to help biopharmaceutical and pharmaceutical customers with  upstream and downstream processes, from gene to protein expression through final formulation and drug delivery. The center includes life sciences and advanced materials research tools, including cleanroom facilities, multiple mass spectrometers, specially constructed bioreactors, and particle size analyzers.

“We are combining more than 100 years of expertise producing high-quality, high-purity cGMP materials with a cross-discipline of research and capabilities, all under one roof to address today’s customized drug development processes,” said Ashish Kulkarni, Avantor’s executive vice president and chief technology officer.

“The Bridgewater Innovation Center houses multiple research platforms to address issues such as facilitating recombinant protein engineering, protein expression, purification and trace materials characterization,” said Brian Beyer, global director of R&D and bioprocessing applications. “We also have research platforms to investigate new excipient formulations to enhance API stability.”

The facility will also be used to conduct research and development on electronics materials, with chemistries that require purity at the parts-per-trillion level. “Our experience in controlling trace metals in chemistries for semiconductor applications will also contribute to our research into the impact of trace metals in biopharmaceutical and pharmaceutical applications,” said Beyer.

“Similar to a contract research organization, we have broad capabilities to work with customers and serve as an agile extension of their own R&D departments,” said Kulkarni. “Our goal is to help them drive collaborative development and product commercialization. We’re excited to use this facility to continue accelerating innovation for our global life sciences and advanced technologies customers.”

Avantor’s Bridgewater Innovation Center is housed in a 110-acre life sciences campus centrally located in the northeast U.S. bioscience technology corridor, within 100 miles of roughly 3,000 med-tech companies and close to Princeton University, Rutgers University and the New Jersey Institute of Technology.