In the first part of a two-part interview, Paz Vellanki of Precision for Medicine explains what sponsors should bring to early FDA meetings and how manufacturing and assay readiness can delay rare disease trials.
|Articles|June 16, 2016
Pfizer Builds Biologics Clinical Manufacturing Facility in Massachusetts
Author(s)BioPharm International Editors
Pfizer broke ground at its Andover, Massachusetts campus on a clinical manufacturing facility for complex biologics and vaccines.
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Pfizer Inc. broke ground for its new biologics clinical manufacturing facility in Andover, Massachusetts, on June 16, 2016, the company announced. Expanding the company’s presence in the state, Pfizer will invest more than $200 million in development of the 175,000-ft2 facility that will enable the production of complex biologics and vaccines. The new five-story building is expected to be operational by January 2019. Approximately 75 new employees will be hired to support clinical manufacturing. In addition to the Andover campus, Massachusetts is home to Pfizer’s Research and Development hub in Cambridge, and Pfizer has approximately 2000 employees based in Massachusetts.
The new clinical manufacturing facility is designed with five independent manufacturing suites to support Pfizer’s complex and diverse biologics research effort. The facility will employ flexible design to fully enable next-generation manufacturing strategies, including single-use bioreactors and disposable process technologies. Pfizer says it will provide clinical manufacturing options with the lowest cost and greatest flexibility for efficiently driving important clinical drugs to patients.
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