Laureate Pharma, a partner company of Safeguard Scientifics, plans to invest as much as $9 million to expand its biopharmaceutical manufacturing facility in Princeton, NJ. The expansion will provide the company with a new pilot production plant with two separate production suites and expanded purification capacity to support additional cGMP production. The new pilot plant will include stainless steel stirred tank bioreactors and disposable single-use bioreactors, the same technologies used in the company’s large-scale cGMP biomanufacturing facility.

The pilot plant is designed for process development, production and purification of early-phase preclinical proteins and is isolated from Laureate’s main manufacturing area. New equipment includes bioprocess purification systems, analytical testing systems and associated equipment. The company expects employment to grow 15% by the end of the year.

“2006 has been a very strong year for Laureate Pharma,” said Robert Broeze, Ph.D., Laureate’s president and chief executive officer. “In anticipation of continued growth, we are significantly increasing our development and manufacturing capacity to meet our clients’ current and future needs.”

“This expansion will enable Laureate Pharma, our partner company, to accommodate increased customer demand for protein-based biopharmaceutical products, without disruption to ongoing customer projects,” said James Datin, executive vice president and managing director, Life Sciences of Safeguard Scientifics.

Construction has begun with completion of the production suites targeted for the end of this year. The additional cGMP capacity is expected to be operational in mid-2007.