Thermo Fisher Scientific to Double Viral Vector Manufacturing Capacity

Thermo Fisher Scientific announced on May 11, 2020 that it is building a new commercial manufacturing site in Plainville, MA, that will expand its capacity for viral vector development and manufacturing services. The company will invest $180 million into the project, which will more than double the company's commercial viral vector capacity. The expansion is meant to support the increasing demand for the development and manufacture of gene therapies and vaccines.

The new 290,000-ft2 facility is expected to be completed in 2022 and will add more than 200 jobs while complementing the company's new or recently expanded capacity in Lexington and Cambridge, MA, and Alachua, FL.

The Plainville site will offer a flexible and scalable configuration of laboratory and production suites and will be co-located with adjacent warehousing and office space. It will also house an onsite engineering laboratory that will help customers develop turnkey production platforms to enable rapid scale-up to commercial-scale operations. Thermo Fisher strategically selected Plainville to capitalize on its expertise at other Massachusetts locations and draw upon the talent pool in the Greater Boston area. The state-of-the-art facility will feature digital connectivity and capabilities that will enable operational efficiencies, high quality, data visibility, and advanced operator training.

"The Plainville expansion significantly enhances our 'start here, stay here' strategy, ensuring that customers have an uninterrupted pathway from development through commercialization," said Michel Lagarde, executive vice-president of Thermo Fisher Scientific, in a company press release. "Between Plainville and our other expanded sites in the [United States], we're increasing viral vector production to accelerate cell and gene therapy innovation, giving hope to more patients everywhere."

"The global race to develop new transformative medicines illustrates how important it is for our customers to have access to surge capacity as well as flexibility to adapt and change therapeutic platforms, whether they are developing a new viral vector for a novel therapy or the next life-saving cancer treatment," Lagarde added.

Source: Thermo Fisher Scientific