The National Institute for Bioprocessing Research and Training (NIBRT) and GE Healthcare have opened a new training center, where as many as 1,500 professionals are expected to receive training on an annual basis. The NIBRT-GE Single-Use Centre of Excellence features the latest technologies and aims to further enhance biomanufacturing expertise in Ireland, Europe and globally.

Ireland is among the top biopharma manufacturing locations with more than €10 billion of investment in the past ten years from global companies. NIBRT supports the modernization of infrastructure and talent development in this sector.

The institute is seeing increasing demand for single-use technologies that bring more flexibility to biomanufacturing, as more precise therapies are being developed for smaller patient populations.

The new center will also support GE BioPark Cork, a GE-managed campus including four prefabricated, off-the-shelf biologics factories owned by independent biopharma companies manufacturing medicines, creating as many as 500 jobs.  The training center at NIBRT is where personnel learn the technologies that will be used at BioPark.

“NIBRT are delighted to launch today the NIBRT-GE Single-Use Centre of Excellence, which will enable us to provide high-quality training programmes in all aspects of single-use biopharma manufacturing. In addition, we look forward to working with our clients on a broad range of process development and optimisation activities in this innovative centre,” said Dominic Carolan, chief executive officer, NIBRT.

 “The biopharma industry is growing rapidly; of the top ten therapeutics on the market today, eight are biopharmaceuticals. Our customers are constantly looking for flexible ways to improve capacity and the efficiency of their manufacturing operations. We need to foster innovation and partner with the best to respond to this need – with the NIBRT partnership and GE BioPark Cork we are doing exactly this,” said David Radspinner, General Manager, BioPark, GE Healthcare.

The NIBRT-GE CoE is run by NIBRT with GE as the technology provider, delivering an integrated biomanufacturing platform based on single-use technologies. The training activities are expected to be operational in 2H17.