The new operations, part of a 400,000 sq. ft St. Louis, Missouri manufacturing campus, will feature completely separate plant and animal protein processing facilities to eliminate potential cross-contamination. A dedicated natural and recombinant (transgenic) plant proteins facility will occupy 22,000 sq. ft. for its upstream and downstream processing operations. A separate animal-sourced proteins facility will encompass over 20,000 sq. ft. for upstream processing and be supported by an area that contains over 300,000 sq. ft. of total capacity. Downstream animal-sourced purification will take place in an adjacent 5,000 sq. ft. clean room suite.
"SAFC is a recognized leader in cGMP purification of therapeutic proteins from natural-sourced material," said SAFC President, Frank Wicks. "Recent successes in the transgenic plant market combined with advancements of several of our natural active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) derived from plants have provided impetus to expand our capacity. We have several projects moving into late-stage clinical trials and commercial manufacturing and are expanding to meet growing customer demand."
SAFC is working closely with numerous transgenic plant platform companies to develop commercial-scale processes for proteins previously available only from animal-sourced materials and for therapeutic proteins and monoclonal antibodies. The company is also experiencing strong demand for cGMP proteins from animal-sourced materials for use in medical device applications and APIs.
This announcement follows recent SAFC capacity and technology expansion activities. These include: the purchase of the SAFC Arklow, Ireland facility; a large-scale API manufacturing site with 90,000 liters of total cGMP capacity; the acquisition of SAFC Pharmorphix, a Cambridge, U.K. based solid-state research studies company; and an $18 million dollar expansion of the SAFC Madison high-potency chemistry facility. Additionally seven-day-per-week workshift extensions have been introduced at the company's SAFC Gillingham U.K. API manufacturing site and its SAFC Manchester U.K. medicinal chemistry and development facilities.
About SAFC:
SAFC is the custom manufacturing group within Sigma-Aldrich that focuses on both biochemical production and the manufacturing of complex, multi-step organic synthesis of APIs and key intermediates. SAFC has manufacturing facilities around the world dedicated to providing manufacturing services for companies requiring a reliable partner to produce their custom manufactured materials. SAFC has four operating segments - SAFC Pharma, SAFC Supply Solutions, SAFC Biosciences, and SAFC Hitech - and had annual sales of $437million in 2005. SAFC is one of the world's 10 largest fine chemical businesses.
About Sigma-Aldrich:
Sigma-Aldrich is a leading Life Science and High Technology company. Its biochemical and organic chemical products and kits are used in scientific and genomic research, biotechnology, pharmaceutical development, the diagnosis of disease and as key components in pharmaceutical and other high technology manufacturing. The Company has customers in life science companies, university and government institutions, hospitals, and in industry. Over one million scientists and technologists use its products. Sigma-Aldrich operates in 35 countries and has 7,200 employees providing excellent service worldwide. Sigma-Aldrich is committed to Accelerating Customer Success through Leadership in Life Science, High Technology and Service. For more information about Sigma-Aldrich, please visit its award-winning Web site at http://sigma-aldrich.com.
Cautionary Statement:
This release contains forward-looking statements relating to future performance, goals, strategic actions and initiatives and similar intentions and beliefs and other statements regarding the Company's expectations, goals, beliefs, intentions and the like, which involve assumptions regarding the Company's operations and conditions in the markets the Company serves. The Company does not undertake any obligation to update these forward-looking statements.
Source: SAFC
