Fujifilm’s life sciences business rebrands as 91-year-old company continues to evolve
From its humble beginnings in 1934 in Japan as a photographic film manufacturer, Fujifilm Corporation has evolved over nearly a century by leveraging its imaging and information technology to become a global company that has expanded into electronics, healthcare, and other business areas.
Fujifilm has put its money where its mouth is when it comes to life sciences, investing more than $10 billion in expansions and acquisitions over the past 15 years to build its end-to-end capabilities — from early-stage R&D through commercial production — including drug discovery support and contract development and manufacturing.
As part of a strategic rebranding announced earlier this month with the “Partners for Life” tagline, Fujifilm has renamed its life sciences companies to better serve its customers across the drug development lifecycle, from research and discovery to clinical and commercial manufacturing.
Fujifilm Irvine Scientific, with 55-year history as a cell culture pioneer, has been rebranded as Fujifilm Biosciences, offering a portfolio of discovery and research reagents, recombinant growth factors and proteins, specialty chemicals, assay materials, as well as cell culture media and supplements.
Brandon Pence, president and chief operating officer of Fujifilm Biosciences, told Pharma Manufacturing that the new rebranding builds off a “foundation with a lot of history in meeting customer needs, whether it’s the legacy Fujifilm Corporation or within biosciences.”
Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies is now known as Fujifilm Biotechnologies, providing contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) services from preclinical to commercialization for biologics, advanced therapies, and vaccines.
Lars Petersen, CEO of Fujifilm Biotechnologies, told Pharma Manufacturing that there was a need for the company to “strengthen our offerings” with much clearer communications and focus under the Fujifilm life sciences brand umbrella.
Petersen acknowledged that Fujifilm is a “very strong brand” in film “but it is a brand for something that doesn’t help Brandon [Pence] and myself, so we needed to reposition” Fujifilm’s life sciences companies to strengthen how they are perceived with a shared strategy and closer coordination.
“By combining our proprietary technologies, such as AI and sensing, which have been cultivated in the fields of imaging and healthcare, we create new value and support pharmaceutical companies, biotech firms, and academia in both drug discovery support solutions and CDMO services,” Toshihisa Iida, Fujifilm Corporation’s director, corporate vice president, general manager of Life Sciences Strategy Headquarters and Bio CDMO Division, said in a statement.
Pence noted that Fujifilm’s life sciences companies are “weaving in some of the incredible tools that legacy Fujifilm has in data analytics and digitization” and that the strategic rebranding “reflects the aspirations we have for the future” with additional products, services, and capacity.
“As we roll out this new branding strategy, it establishes Fujifilm as a leader in life sciences and one that is looking to invest and grow for years to come,” Pence said.
CDMO operations in Europe, US
Fujifilm Biotechnologies plans to bring additional capacity online this year and in 2026 as it completes expansion projects underway in Europe and the United States. The CDMO is building identical large-scale production facilities in Denmark and the U.S., designed to modularly and seamlessly integrate manufacturing regardless of location.
At its new site in Holly Springs, North Carolina, Fujifilm Biotechnologies is making an investment of $3.2 billion which includes the installation of eight 20,000L bioreactors for bulk drug substances — which begin operations later this year — as well as an additional second phase of eight 20,000L mammalian-cell culture bioreactors by 2028.
When it is fully operational at the end of 2029, Fujifilm Biotechnologies claims the Holly Springs site will be one of the largest cell culture biopharma CDMO facilities in North America, employing a workforce of approximately 1,400 people.
In April 2025, Fujifilm Biotechnologies announced a 10-year manufacturing supply agreement worth more than $3 billion with Regeneron Pharmaceuticals to produce the biotechnology company’s biologic medicines. Under the terms of the agreement, the CDMO will provide production services to Regeneron through current and planned expansions at the Holly Springs site.
With the Regeneron announcement, Petersen said Fujifilm Biotechnologies has “almost overnight changed from a wannabe CDMO leader in the industry” to a global player. Now, he said, “they all know who we are.”
