Thermo Fisher opens US bioprocess design center in Massachusetts

Thermo Fisher Scientific, a global life sciences tools and services company, has opened a flagship Bioprocess Design Center at its Plainville, Massachusetts facility to support customers developing and scaling biologics, including vaccines and cell and gene therapies.

The center adds 4,000 square feet of laboratory and training space to Thermo Fisher's existing 290,000-square-foot Plainville site, which already provides integrated sterile fill-finish and viral vector services, according to the announcement. The facility reportedly is designed to give customers access to Thermo Fisher's end-to-end bioproduction workflow, spanning media, cell line development, single-use systems, chromatography, filtration, purification, and analytics.

Onsite bioprocess specialists will provide hands-on demonstrations, training, and technical consulting, working directly with customers to test and refine processes, validate concepts, and address scale-up challenges, according to the company.

Daniella Cramp, senior vice president and president of bioproduction and customer excellence at Thermo Fisher, said in a statement the center is designed to help translate innovative ideas into scalable solutions that advance biologics development and manufacturing for U.S. customers.

The opening follows recent product launches by Thermo Fisher. Earlier this month, the company launched an automated fill-finish system to reduce manual intervention and improve consistency in cell therapy manufacturing workflows, and a Chinese hamster ovary (CHO)-based platform designed to compress development timelines and improve process consistency for biologics and biosimilar manufacturers.