Fujifilm expands biotech in College Station

Texas is adding another building block for its hopes of becoming a biotech hub.

Fujifilm Diosynth broke ground on its $300 million medical manufacturing facility expansion, the Houston Chronicle reported. The maker of the Novavax coronavirus vaccine is expanding its campus in College Stations–home of Texas A&M University–in a move that will double its vaccine manufacturing capacity in the US.

Fujifilm and Texas A&M were chosen in 2020 to receive a $265 million contract to create and mass-produce a vaccine to the deadly COVID-19 virus, which sent the world into a massive shutdown more than two years ago. With the US contract complete, the company is now producing Novavax at its site in the United Kingdom.

With the expansion, the plant, which is located about 100 miles northwest of Houston, will become one of the largest single-use medical device manufacturing campuses in North America. The 300,000-square-foot manufacturing facility is located near the Texas A&M Health Science Center campus. The expansion is being funded, in part, by a $1.5 million grant from the Texas Enterprise Fund, which grants money to companies promising to create jobs.

The College Station site expanded previously, with the $55 million, 60,000-square-foot addition known as the Advance Therapies Innovation Center, which opened at the end of 2021.

Fujifilm plans to add 138,000 square feet that will allow for more bioreactors and associated purification equipment. It will primarily be used to make single-use, disposable device technology.

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