Thermo Fisher Scientific, a US-based supplier of science services, is expanding capacity for viral development by building a new commercial manufacturing site in Plainville, Massachusetts, USA.,Completion of the 290,000 ft2 (around 2,700 m2) facility is expected in 2022, adding more than 200 jobs.

The $180 million project will more than double the company's commercial viral vector capacity to support increasing demand for the development and manufacture of gene therapies and vaccines. It complements new or recently expanded capacity in Lexington and Cambridge, Massachusetts and Alachua, Florida.

"The Plainville expansion significantly enhances our 'start here, stay here' strategy, ensuring that customers have an uninterrupted pathway from development through commercialization," said executive vice president Michel Lagarde.

Thermo Fisher said the Plainville site will offer a flexible and scalable configuration of laboratory and production suites co-located with adjacent warehousing and office space. In addition, an onsite engineering laboratory will help customers develop turnkey production platforms, enabling them to transition rapidly to commercial-scale operations.

The company added that it selected Plainville in order to capitalize on the expertise at its other Massachusetts locations.

"The global race to develop new transformative medicines illustrates how important it is for our customers to have access to surge capacity as well as flexibility to adapt and change therapeutic platforms, whether they are developing a new viral vector for a novel therapy or the next life-saving cancer treatment," Lagarde commented.

In March, Thermo Fisher announced it would invest more than $475 million this year in new capacity and capabilities focused on three areas of greatest demand: biologics, including cell and gene therapy, drug product development and commercial capabilities. It plans to open more facilities this year in St. Louis, Missouri and Princeton, New Jersey.

Thermo Fisher is also in the process of buying Qiagen, a Dutch provider of molecular diagnostics and sample preparation technologies. The $11.5 billion purchase is expected to close in the first half of 2021.