Thermo Fisher Scientific is investing more than $475 million in new capabilities and capacity in 2020 around three areas of greatest demand: biologics, cell and gene therapy, and drug product development and commercial capabilities.

This investment, in addition to those made in 2019, brings the total investment over two years to approximately $800 million across the company’s pharma services business.

Thermo Fisher’s St. Louis site completed its $50 million expansion, doubling production capacity for biologic drug substance development and commercial manufacturing leveraging single-use technology. In July, a new Bioprocessing Collaboration Center will open at its St. Louis site, where multiple Thermo Fisher businesses will jointly develop new bioprocessing products, workflows and services for customers.

Following its acquisition of Brammer Bio, Thermo Fisher expanded its viral vector development and manufacturing capabilities, opening a new site in Lexington, MA and expanding sites in Cambridge, MA and Alachua, FL. Later this year, the company will open a new cell therapy development and manufacturing collaboration center in Princeton, NJ, combining pharma and bioscience services from across the broader Thermo Fisher network.

To help drug product manufacturers scale from low-volume development to low- and high-volume commercial manufacturing, and for developers with solubility challenges, Thermo Fisher now offers commercial spray drying capabilities. The company is also making significant investments to scale up its sterile drug development and commercial capabilities globally to cover a full range of dosage forms for sterile injectables.

Additionally, Thermo Fisher now offers continuous manufacturing capabilities, which can produce four times the volume of oral solid dosage forms than standard lines. New commercial packaging capabilities are available for smaller production runs or for oral solid dose and sterile drug product requiring flexibility. Thermo Fisher’s new QC Lab of the Future, leveraging its analytical instruments, integrates and automates workflows by combining capabilities across Thermo Fisher to help deliver products faster with high quality and improved consistency.

“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, Thermo Fisher’s pharma services business. “Our offering can provide solutions at all points along the pathway to commercialization, whether it’s an emerging biotech working on vaccine for a novel virus or a high-volume pharmaceutical manufacturer delivering necessary drugs at scale.”