Janssen commits as first tenant in Fujifilm Diosynth US facility

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Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen Supply Group is to be the first tenant in Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies’ $2 billion cell culture manufacturing facility, which is planned to open in Holly Springs, North Carolina, in 2025.

This move sees Janssen committing to a large-scale manufacturing suite at the upcoming facility and is an extension of an existing relationship between Janssen and the contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO). The aim is to support the development of Janssen’s clinical and commercial pipeline.

Fujifilm Diosynth focuses on the manufacturing and development of large molecule products including biologics, vaccines, cell and gene therapies and oncolytic viruses. The company broke ground on its Holly Springs facility in 2021, which is touted to become the largest CDMO in North America. The plant will host manufacturing equipment including two large-scale manufacturing suites with four 20,000 L bioreactors each, and has the capacity to expand with 24 more bioreactors.

Once the facility construction is complete, it is planned to handle manufacturing processes including drug substance manufacturing, automated fill-finish and assembly, packaging, and labeling. Fujifilm Diosynth also sees the plant as a key part of its global network that allows manufacturing close to patients and to the overall supply chain, which would improve the environmental sustainability of product transportation.

These latest decisions are part of an effort by Fujifilm Diosynth to increase its manufacturing capacity more than fivefold with a $7 billion investment across Europe and the US. The company also completed a manufacturing facility for cell and gene therapies and viral vaccines in the UK in September 2023.

Fujifilm Diosynth isn’t the only CDMO ramping up its production capacity. For example, Samsung Biologics expects a fifth plant, costing $1.5 billion, to be operational by 2025, while Aragen Life Sciences recently unveiled plans for a $30 million facility in Bangalore, India.