Clean Cells Opens New €22 Million Facility
Clean Cells, part of France’s Clean Biologics group, which provides biopharmaceutical product quality control services and manufactures starting materials, has begun analytical activities at its new €22 million facility in Montaigu-Vendée, near Nantes.
With an area of 5,300m2, the company said the new site offers four times more laboratory space than the previous building and represents a “major milestone” in its development. A new state-of-the-art monitoring system is expected to provide better pharmaceutical organization.
The aim of the revamp is to enable the company to develop its activities in innovative sectors such as gene therapy, with the implementation of new tests to meet the needs of the market. Going forward, Clean Cells said it will be able to offer new and improved innovative platforms, including next-generation sequencing (NGS) and karyotyping.
Joseph Jammal, CEO of the Clean Biologics group, said the project represents the culmination of five years of planning, design and construction to support the subsidiary’s growth in response to market demands.
Especially in viral safety and genetic stability, the lab space offers much greater potential for strong growth, the group believes. Testing capacities have been increased fourfold, and cell bank production capacity has doubled, allowing the development of biopharmaceutical drugs to be accelerated.
Clean Cells plans to recruit 20 new staff in 2023. It currently employs 130 people.
Gwenaël Autret, head of quality control, said the new laboratories will allow a significant increase in biosafety testing, and cytogenetic and potency assay capacities.
The global biologics safety testing market was estimated to be worth $3.6 billion in 2022 and should reach $6.8 billion in 2027, the company said. This represents a CAGR of 13.3%, driven by the expanding development of biologics and biosimilars, growing concerns over cell culture contamination and rising biopharmaceutical R&D investment.
Author: Dede Williams, Freelance Journalist
