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Most people drive right by and don’t even notice it’s there. Or, if they do know it’s there, they really have no idea what goes on inside. The innocuous looking red and white brick building on Discovery Drive, ironically, doesn’t really get “discovered” by many everyday people in our community.
But what goes on inside FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies’ College Station facility might just blow your mind.
“We use bugs to make drugs,” explained Gerry Farrell, Ph.D., Chief Operating Office for FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies in Texas and California. “We use animal cells to make gene therapy medicines.”
In short, the company is a contract development and manufacturing organization, or CDMO, which supports the biopharmaceutical industry in the production of clinical and commercial therapies. The phrases gene therapy, biopharmaceutical manufacturing, exosome purification, or even biologics likely convey a general perception of “medical research” to average folks. However, the company’s products take on a much more personal meaning when people begin to realize that FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies is involved in producing vaccines like the COVID vaccine, though that particular vaccine is not currently manufactured in College Station.
“For me, the coolest part is that we see a great variety of different products. We can work on a gene therapy for a rare disease like Huntingtons or Muscular Dystrophy,” says Farrell, “We can make antibodies that will bind to a particular cancer cell for an oncology treatment. We are supporting cutting edge treatments here.”
“We not only make the ingredients for a drug,” Farrell says. “But we’re also manufacturing the final product. Our clients are small biotech and large pharmaceutical companies. These small companies can’t build a facility like this to make one product. So, we contract with them to manufacture their products.”
FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies is one of the major reasons the Bryan/College Station area is increasingly referred to as the Texas Biocorridor. The company does its process development and manufacturing at numerous facilities all over the world. FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies is a world leading contract development and manufacturing organization, with U.S. manufacturing operations set up in Morrisville, North Carolina and College Station, Texas, along with overseas facilities in Teesside, United Kingdom and Hillerød, Denmark in Europe, along with recently added facilities in Thousand Oaks, California and Watertown, Massachusetts.
The company’s recent groundbreaking expansion at the College Station facility is a $300 million investment with the addition of 130,000 square feet to its facility. It will also mean the addition of 150 highly skilled jobs at this new site.
“How do we know when it’s time to expand?” Farrell asks. “It’s based on how we see our customers develop. It’s a long process — about 10 years — from first stage to end stage manufacturing. So, we look at our customers’ projections for growth. Biologics is a growing field. We take a view through our business development group that we’ll be the leading CDMO.”
“Those goals drive expansion,” Farrell explains. “We’re expanding all over the world. Since 2011, our owners have invested over $7 billion dollars.”
Fortunately for College Station, that expansion is happening here in the Brazos Valley.
FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies is expanding what it calls its “flexible biomanufacturing,” which the company says the College Station facility is designed to “support late phase and commercial manufacturing of gene therapies and other advanced therapies.” The bio manufacturing facility complements the early phase manufacturing capabilities are provided through the National Centre for Therapeutic Manufacture, which is also located in College Station.
The current expansion, recently celebrated with an official groundbreaking ceremony, adds cell culture and high throughput manufacturing capabilities to the company’s existing facility. The new expansion will be built to house multiple 500-liter and 2000-liter bioreactors that will facilitate the production of FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies’ gene therapy products, which high production demands. Essentially, the expansion will allow the company to meet the “growing demand for commercial- ready, high-volume production of gene therapy products.” Many of these products are being developed to treat rare diseases.
