Biotage is an Uppsala, Sweden-based company that offers products for the purification of large-scale lipids, used in mRNA vaccine development and production. Expanding its production capacity of large-scale flash columns by 300 percent, Biotage is now helping pharmaceutical companies and contract manufacturers scale up lipid production for COVID-19 vaccines. A new, bespoke production facility is now operational at the Biotage site in Cardiff, UK.
 
“Our customers needed to manufacture their products on a significantly larger scale, and we were able to invest in an expansion of our existing production facilities to support their requirements,” said Anders Wikström, executive vice president of operations, Biotage. “We were very pleased to be able to deliver this expansion in just over four months in order to meet the needs of present and potential new clients.”
 
According to the company, the availability of raw materials for mRNA vaccine production has been a major bottleneck as the lipids that were needed for new LNP (Lipid Nano Particles formulations used in mRNA vaccines) were not previously available on the scale needed to produce billions of doses of vaccine globally. The rapid development of a scalable and reliable route into commercial production of these lipids has been made possible with the aid of Biotage’s flash purification platforms, systems and expertise.
 
The newly opened production facility will enable Biotage to meet the increase in demand for this vital market segment, without any disruption to existing clients already producing APIs, fine chemicals, natural products or in other markets.
 
Tomas Blomquist, president and CEO, Biotage, said, “This initiative is an example of how Biotage has a positive impact on society in line with our ethos HumanKind Unlimited. At the same time, it proves that we have a keen ear to our customers’ needs and have built an organization capable of moving quickly to meet new demand in rapidly growing niche markets within the pharmaceutical industry.”