Avantor, Inc., a global provider of mission-critical products and services to the life sciences, is relocating and significantly expanding the company’s Bridgewater, NJ Innovation Center, which serves as a technology-driven research and collaboration environment where Avantor works with customers to develop and enhance their offerings. The new location will be double the current size of the available lab and pilot space.

The expanded Innovation Center will open in August 2024 at a nearby location in Bridgewater. The new site will support customers’ pipelines across all modalities, including monoclonals, cell and gene therapy and mRNA, and will feature a development and application area, including a viral vector laboratory.

Labs in the new center will include upstream and downstream process development, chemistry and material science, analytical and bioanalytical, viral vector workflows, and electronic materials. Larger and more flexible pilot labs with additional capacity and capability to produce novel excipients, resins and biopharma reagents will enable quicker production scale-up for customers. Additional pilot areas for upstream and downstream production will feature Avantor’s chemical manufacturing and single-use expertise.

In addition, digital service offerings will include Avantor’s Inventory Manager, a vendor-agnostic cloud-based software designed to serve as the central transactional and intelligence hub for lab inventory management.

“We are committed to supporting our customers’ requirements and growth, and this expansion allows us to take an even more collaborative approach to deliver customized solutions that move science forward,” said Nandkumar Deorkar, senior vice president of R&D and innovation, Avantor. “By adding capacity, talent, and capability to our Innovation Center, Avantor is in a stronger position to support the growing demands for gene therapy and mRNA workflows, facilitate pipeline project execution and enable quicker production scale-up. These enhancements will pave the way for the innovations of tomorrow.”