GE Healthcare plans to open a biotechnology manufacturing center at the Stevenage Bioscience Catalyst (SBC) Open Innovation Campus, in Stevenage, U.K.

In the first half of 2019, the center will start producing a fiber-based purification platform, which has the potential to improve efficiency in the purification steps of manufacturing biopharmaceuticals, gene therapies, and viral vectors.

The fiber-based purification platform comprises material with a unique proprietary structure. It has the potential to significantly improve process speed, flexibility, and robustness during purification, a key step in the manufacturing of biopharmaceuticals. Additional products also will be produced at the center to serve both laboratory and clinical applications.  

Opening the new facility, which incorporates 3,000 sq. ft (280 m2) of cleanroom space, will boost to 20 the number of workers at GE Healthcare’s Stevenage facility. The fiber-based purification products will be prepared in Stevenage before being further processed and finished in GE Healthcare’s existing manufacturing facility in Cardiff, Wales.

Biopharmaceuticals, such as monoclonal antibodies, are the world’s fastest-growing class of medicine. The global market for biopharmaceuticals is estimated at more than $200 billion, and the market is growing around eight percent annually¹. All of the top 10 biologic drugs by global revenue use GE Healthcare technologies in their manufacture².

The purification technology to be produced at the new facility came to GE Healthcare as part of the acquisition of Puridify, in November 2017. Puridify was founded in 2013 as a spin-out from University College London (UCL) and was based at the bio-incubator facility at the SBC, where GE Healthcare maintains an open laboratory aimed at providing SBC tenants with affordable access to advanced protein and cell analysis technologies.

(Source: GE Healthcare)