CordenPharma, a full-service contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), excipients, drug products and packaging services, unveiled a major investment project to increase lipid manufacturing capacity at its CordenPharma Chenôve facility, near Dijon, France. This decision was a result of the increased demand to supply millions of patients with life-enhancing or life-saving medicines based on mRNA technology.

After the successful completion of their first request to support rapid COVID-19 medicine production in 2020, the French Government launched a second request for another “Capacity Building” program called AMI (Appel à Manifestation d’Intérêt) in February 2021 to support COVID-19 research and development projects and boost the industrialization of health products in France. Due to the support and partnership spirit of the Banque Publique d’Investissement France (BPI France), CordenPharma Chenôve submitted an accelerated program dossier to increase local lipids manufacturing capacity using innovative, green technologies. CordenPharma learned that the Chenôve facility was selected by the French government as one of 25 AMI projects to be awarded a total investment of €585 million. With this financial booster received, CordenPharma Chenôve was able to accelerate its manufacturing growth for the production of Lipid Nanoparticle (LNP) enabling ingredients such as highly-pure lipids.

Since cGMP high-grade lipids play an increasingly significant role in today’s mRNA pharmaceutical development landscape, CordenPharma Chenôve has, in recent years, engaged in projects on behalf of customers to address their specific process concerns by employing state-of-the-art manufacturing. Considering these past successes, CordenPharma made the decision to invest the AMI money towards their Lipids platform by expanding CordenPharma Chenôve’s capabilities to include innovative purification technologies that reduce their environmental footprint. This ongoing program will create approximately 30 new jobs in the facility.

Phase 1 of the investment program was recently completed with the renovation of an R&D laboratory and the addition of several analytical instruments, a GMP mid-scale purification unit, and a newly-hired, focused team of experts. At the head of the purification group is Sebastien Thomas, a veteran in supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) purification who brings close to 30 years of experience from Janssen Pharmaceuticals, where he became an expert in developing industrial SFC chemistry processes.

“Although CordenPharma has always provided customers with both custom and standard lipids through our global network of sites across the EU and U.S., this capacity expansion and corresponding investment in a new team and innovative purification technologies will reduce our environmental footprint and create exciting opportunities not only for CordenPharma Chenôve, but our entire network of full-service capabilities,” said Matthieu Giraud, director, global peptides, lipids and carbohydrates platforms. This reinforces CordenPharma’s position as a reliable long-term partner for the pharmaceutical industry, far beyond the demands initially brought on by COVID-19.”

Phase 2 of the investment has also been initiated, which includes the design and construction of a larger GMP lipid chemistry facility at CordenPharma Chenôve. Using a modern manufacturing concept, the “Capacity Building” funding program provided by the French Government, supplemented with additional support from CordenPharma, will accelerate, and strengthen their already strong European position as a major supplier of cGMP highly-pure lipids. The additional production capacity will allow CordenPharma Chenove to provide customers with multi metric tons of lipids by the end of 2022.