December 16, 2021 – Pfizer Inc. announced the opening of a new, state-of-the-art clinical manufacturing facility in Durham, North Carolina. The facility expands Pfizer’s end-to-end capabilities in gene therapy and builds on the company’s existing footprint in North Carolina, which includes more than 3,600 employees across sites in the state.
The 85,500 square foot Durham facility will be home to Pfizer’s BioTherapeutics Pharmaceutical Sciences Group, which is responsible for the manufacturing and analytical release of clinical supplies for Pfizer’s gene therapy and biologics portfolio. The facility is expected to create more than 50 new jobs in the coming years, in addition to the approximately 40 employees who will relocate from Pfizer’s site in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
The Durham facility is part of an $800 million investment over the past six years to build three scalable, state-of-the-art gene therapy manufacturing facilities to support Pfizer’s continued investment in gene therapy research, development, and manufacturing.
Pfizer’s $800 million investment to build three scalable, state-of-the-art gene therapy manufacturing facilities includes 300,000 square feet of capacity, one of the largest in-house gene therapy manufacturing facilities, to support multiple gene therapy medicines.
The company has a total bioreactor manufacturing capacity of 22,000 liters, (2,000 liters / bioreactor x 11 bioreactors) using state-of-the art single-use manufacturing technology, scaled to serve the entire market for even the gene therapy indications requiring the administration of the highest doses of gene therapy vectors. These investments have given Pfizer one of the largest production capacities for gene therapy vectors globally. The single-use technology also allows more scalable expansion of manufacturing capacity over time, the company said.