GE Healthcare Opens Biotechnology Manufacturing Center in UK

GE Healthcare is opening a biotechnology manufacturing center at the Stevenage Bioscience Catalyst (SBC) Open Innovation Campus, in Stevenage, United Kingdom, the company announced in a Nov. 27, 2018 press release. In the first half of 2019, the center will start producing a fiber-based chromatography purification platform, which has the potential to improve efficiency in the purification steps of manufacturing biopharmaceuticals, gene therapies, and viral vectors. Additional products will also be produced at the center to serve both laboratory and clinical applications.  

The facility has 3000 ft² (280 m²) of cleanroom space and employs 20 people. 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.

“This technology will bring real efficiency and productivity advantages for biopharmaceutical manufacturers as they move towards integrated, connected, or continuous operations,” said Olivier Loeillot, general manager, BioProcess at GE Healthcare Life Sciences, in the press release. “The fiber-based chromatography technology developed and manufactured in Stevenage will extend GE Healthcare’s start-to-finish bioprocess purification portfolio.”

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 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