Clean Cells, part of the Clean Biologics group, a provider of biopharmaceutical product quality control services and manufacturer of starting materials, opened a new facility in Montaigu-Vendée, France, that will handle analytical activities.

Clean Cells plans to recruit 20 new staff members in 2023. 

At a cost of $22 million, the site offers four times more laboratory space than the previous buildings.

According to the company, the 57,000 square-foot facility, is the largest biopharmaceutical testing site in Europe.

The site will offer customers access to fast response from the Clean Cells teams, with additional high-quality equipment, including a state-of-the-art monitoring system, providing better pharmaceutical organization.

The new building will enable the company to develop its activities in innovative sectors, such as gene therapy, with the implementation of new tests in its catalogue to meet the needs of the market. It will also allow the company to offer new and improved innovative platforms, including Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) and karyotyping.

“We’re very proud to have started our activities in these new facilities, as planned. This project is the culmination of five years of planning, design and construction to support the company’s growth in response to market demands,” said Joseph Jammal, CEO of the Clean Biologics Group. “The Clean Cells teams have managed the transfer outstandingly well, allowing us to continue to work on our customers’ projects with the highest standards while setting up additional innovative platforms.

In addition, the company said that the new laboratory space provides Clean Cells, with greater potential for strong growth.

Testing capacities at the new facility, are multiplied by four and cell bank production capacity has doubled, enabling Clean Cells to respond even more swiftly to client requests and accelerate the development of biopharmaceutical drugs.

New and improved safety tests will allow the company to actively assist clients through the regulatory process.

“The consistent involvement and high level of competence of our teams has enabled us to seamlessly transfer activities to our new quality control laboratories; ensuring continuity of service for our customers,” said Gwenaël Autret, head of quality control at Clean Cells. “These new laboratories will allow us to accelerate the development of Clean Cells’ services by significantly increasing our biosafety testing, and cytogenetic and potency assay capacities.”

According to Clean Cells, the global biologics safety testing market was estimated to be worth $3.6 billions in 2022 and is expected to reach $6.8 billion in 2027.

The anticipated growth is being driven by the expanding development of biologics and biosimilars, growing concerns over cell culture contamination and rising biopharmaceutical R&D investments