Fujifilm Biotechnologies to leverage downstream purification system at UK site

In early 2026, Fujifilm Biotechnologies plans to leverage an internally developed downstream purification system called SymphonX, designed to help solve the complexities of bioprocessing by simplifying material demand and scale-up, at its microbial manufacturing facility in Billingham, United Kingdom.

The fully automated and customizable purification platform — featured in the Fujifilm Biotechnologies booth at last week’s CPHI Frankfurt conference — runs all downstream unit operations across multiple scales with the flexibility of scaling in fed-batch and continuous processes, according to the company.

The contract development and manufacturing organization developed SymphonX to address the need for plug-and-play flexibility in downstream purification and a single interface to reduce the risk of complex connected bioprocessing operations. In 2022, Fujifilm announced the expansion of its Billingham facility, including a new space meant to “maximize the emerging SymphonX technology” for clinical and commercial manufacturing.

The proprietary SymphonX skid “will be replacing the traditional way of doing downstream processing,” according to Lars Petersen, CEO of Fujifilm Biotechnologies, who touted the connectivity, integration, and automation — with advanced buffer management capabilities — needed for high productivity. Petersen noted that the purification system’s first customer is slated for the spring of 2026 at Fujifilm Biotechnologies’ Billingham site.  

“In the downstream process, you’ve got steps for chromatography, filtration, and inactivation that normally — within the single-use space — are designed to specifically carry out one function, but what we’ve done is look at those steps and their commonality and differences and integrated it all so we have a single system that can do everything,” Charlie Heise, co-inventor of SymphonX and associate director of bioprocess strategy and development for Fujifilm Biotechnologies in Billingham, told Pharma Manufacturing.

Providing a modular and multi-functional purification approach, SymphonX can perform standalone batch processing or integrated and continuous biomanufacturing with a platform that runs all downstream steps — while simplifying and de-risking cGMP operations — under a common framework, according to Heise.

“You could just have one system and then change out the columns and the filters, or what’s actually more useful is that you can have a number of these in a row,” he said. “You’ve got the same control software, computer, talking the same language, and configured in the same way so that you have continuous operations connected to a perfusion bioreactor to get the productivity value.”

SymphonX — a mobile skid on wheels — integrates into Fujifilm Biotechnologies’ automated continuous manufacturing platform MaruX, which offers single-use perfusion bioreactors for high-density cultures at the 500L to 2,000L scale. Depending on a customer’s downstream process needs, with all steps connected and handled by SymphonX, the number of systems utilized would vary across multiple scales.

Heise said SymphonX has built-in flexibility to accommodate a myriad of customer requirements. “Some processes will have more systems and others a bit less,” he added. “You can have all the systems running and communicating with each other, if you want that continuous process.”