And the Facility of the Year is…
Genentech’s Cell Culture Biologics Drug Substance Plant 2 in Vacaville, California
Congratulations to Genentech, which is the overall winner of the International Society for Pharmaceutical Engineering’s (ISPE) 2016 Facility of the Year Awards (FOYA). The winning project? A revamp and restart of the company’s Cell Culture Biologics Drug Substance Plant 2 (CCP2) in Vacaville, California, which supports the production of oncology drugs – a market that has tripled in recent years. According to ISPE, the project “exemplifies the FOYA program commitment to innovate and advance pharmaceutical manufacturing technology” (1).
The Vacaville facility was by no-means an “old facility”. Constructed in the 2000s, the plant was closed in 2010 before it produced a single product; the merger of Roche and Genentech resulted in excess capacity. In 2013, the facility was given a new lease of life thanks to rising demand for the companies’ oncology drugs. Over the last few years, Genentech has been busy upgrading the site with improvements in environmental microbial control, manufacturing control and automation. The project – led by Chris Schreil, Senior Principal Engineer/Project Advisor at Genentech – was completed two months ahead of schedule and within the planned budget. The facility reopened in January 2015 and uses some of the largest scale cell culture production equipment in the industry (8 x 25,000-L bioreactors; 1.8 m diameter chromatography columns; seven clean-in-place skids for both upstream and downstream areas). As well as being the overall winner for FOYA, the company won the Process Innovation category.
It’s not the first time that Genentech has been the overall winner of FOYA – it also came out on top in 2007 for its Oceanside, California, facility and in 2010 for its Tuas facility in Singapore. Genentech’s parent company, Roche, has also received a number of FOYA category awards over the years, as well as being declared the overall winner in 2009.
The individual category winners for FOYA 2016 were announced at the start of the year.
- Process Innovation, Genentech, Cell Culture Biologics Drug Substance Plant 2, USA
- Equipment Innovation, Pfizer, Portable Continuous Miniature and Modular Collaboration, USA
- Facility Integration, Takara Bio, Center for Gene and Cell Processing Construction, Japan
- Operational Excellence, Baxter BioPharma Solutions, Oncology Manufacturing Expansion, Germany
- Project Execution, Janssen Vaccines, ZEBOV in 81J project, Switzerland
- Sustainability, Ethicon, San Lorenzo Conservation Strategy, Puerto Rico
Honorable Mentions were also awarded to three companies for separate projects: Greater Pharma Manufacturing, Thailand; University of Strathclyde, UK; and West Pharmaceutical Services,
USA.
- ISPE, “ISPE names 2016 Facility of the Year Awards Overall Winner”, (2016). Available at: bit.ly/2exm7hT. Accessed October 17, 2016.
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