GE Increases Cell Culture Media Production Capacity

On May 16, 2018, GE Healthcare Life Sciences announced that it is increasing the annual production capacity of powdered cell culture media by tenfold at its facility in Pasching, Austria with a newly built manufacturing suite. The new suite will help to strengthen product supply for biopharmaceutical companies in Europe, according to the company.

In addition to the Pasching facility, GE is also doubling its powdered cell culture media manufacturing capacity in Logan, Utah, in the United States and is expanding the site’s stability services offering to support biopharma companies with stability data on custom media formulations. The company is also running a major manufacturing transformation project in Logan using Brilliant Manufacturing, its software suite that combines lean and advanced manufacturing with software analytics.

An example of the software’s advantage is the ability of the new electronic batch record system to remove more than seven million manual entries and substantially reduce the time required to conduct 100,000 internal batch record quality reviews annually, the company reports. The digital solutions will also provide greater transparency for biopharmaceutical companies because they will be receiving real-time data on their cell culture media, which would increase their understanding and control over the overall manufacturing processes.

GE has three cell culture media production facilities globally: in Pasching, Austria; Tuas, Singapore; and Logan, Utah. Cell culture media is a critical ingredient in biopharmaceutical production that supports the growth of cells.

“The biopharmaceutical industry is focusing even more on security of supply and consistent quality of the key technologies and materials used in their manufacturing processes. The capacity increase in Pasching helps us to meet the growing customer demand in Europe for powdered cell culture media, which is a continued trend in more mature biopharmaceutical markets due to their longer shelf-life and lower transportation and storage costs compared to liquid media. In Europe and in the US, the current uptake of powdered media is already between 60 and 70%,” says Olivier Loeillot, general manager, BioProcess, GE Healthcare Life Sciences.

GE’s cell culture media production facilities in Singapore and Utah have been certified according to ISO 22301:2012, the international standard for business continuity management systems. The Austria facility is scheduled to be certified in 2018.

Source: GE Healthcare