US laboratory equipment manufacturer Thermo Fisher Scientific is investing more than $475 million this year in new capacity and capabilities. In addition to its investments in 2019, this brings its total spend to about $800 million over two years across the company’s pharma services business.

"We've invested strategically to ensure that lack of capabilities, capacity or supply is never a reason medicines are delayed in reaching patients," said Mike Shafer, president of Thermo Fisher's pharma services business.

The company said it is investing to align capabilities and capacity around three areas of greatest demand: biologics, cell and gene therapy; drug product development; and commercial capabilities.

In July, it will open a new bioprocessing collaboration center on its site in St. Louis, Missouri, where multiple Thermo Fisher businesses will jointly develop innovative bioprocessing products, workflows and services for customers. This follows a $50 million expansion at St. Louis that has doubled production capacity for biological drug substance development and commercial manufacturing.

Following its $1.7 billion acquisition of Brammer Bio, which completed on May 1, 2019, and in direct response to growing demand, Thermo Fisher said it has rapidly expanded its viral vector development and manufacturing capabilities by opening a new site in Lexington, Massachusetts and expanding sites in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Alachua, Florida.

The company will also open later this year a new cell therapy development and manufacturing collaboration center in Princeton, New Jersey, combining pharma services and biosciences expertise from across the broader Thermo Fisher network.

With regard to new capabilities, Thermo Fisher said it now offers commercial spray drying to enable a “seamless pathway” from early development to commercial approval. Likewise, to address an increased need, the science services group is making “unprecedented” investments to scale up its global sterile drug development and commercial capabilities to cover a full range of dosage forms for sterile injectables.

Shafer added that Thermo Fisher will continue to invest so that customers can “start with us in development and stay with us throughout the product lifecycle”.

Earlier this month, Thermo Fisher announced its intention to buy Qiagen, a Dutch provider of molecular diagnostics and sample preparation technologies. The transaction, which is expected to close in the first half of 2021, values Qiagen at $11.5 billion.