Recipharm has announced an approximately $550,000 investment into a new GLP (Good Laboratory Practice) compliant bioanalysis laboratory at its development facility in Uppsala, Sweden, in response to growing customer demand.

The investment will see the opening of a 500 square meter purpose-built facility in November 2016, which the company says will become the largest GLP bioanalysis laboratory of its kind in the Nordic countries.

Recipharm’s development team in Uppsala specializes in medicinal chemistry, offering synthesis and analytical preclinical development services to drug development companies progressing products through clinical trials.

From its new laboratory, the contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) will increase its capacity, with the capability to process more than 10,000 plasma samples per week.

“This is a strategic investment for Recipharm as there is a real need for more GLP bioanalysis laboratories in the Nordic region,” said Fredrik Lehmann, general manager, Recipharm Development. “Bioanalysis requires specialist expertise and establishing the necessary capabilities can be a costly investment, proving a barrier to entry for many contract services providers. Having first started out in a collaboration with a subcontractor, we are now delighted to be able to expand our offering in-house to service an unmet need for bioanalysis capabilities.”

In order to support the increasing demand of bioanalysis services, Recipharm Development in Uppsala plans to recruit several new PhD level chemists in the coming months and aims to more than double its team of 35 in the next couple of years.