Fujifilm Enters Growing Market of Vaccine Contract Manufacturing

Fujifilm Corporation has announced an agreement to acquire Kalon Biotherapeutics, a biopharmaceutical CMO having expertise in vaccine manufacturing, and will enter the vaccine CMO market to expand its biopharmaceutical business.

On 22 October 2014, Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies — a Fujifilm subsidiary — signed an Interest Purchase Agreement, with the owners of Kalon. At the initial closing of this transaction expected to occur within the next few months, FDBU will acquire 49% of the total membership interests in Kalon and will be entitled to appoint a majority of Kalon’s board members. Thereafter, FDBU may increase its interest share up to 100% based on achievement of certain milestones set forth in the Interest Purchase Agreement.

Kalon is a biopharmaceutical CMO with advanced technologies and facilities and is a key subcontractor to one of the three Centers For Innovation In Advanced Development and Manufacturing (CIADM) awarded by the US Department of Health and Human Services, Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) to develop and manufacture medical countermeasures to protect public health in emergencies, including incidents of bioterrorism or an outbreak of pandemic influenza. The state of Texas, through the Texas Emerging Technology Fund, provided funding critical to the development and support of this center.

Kalon’s strength is in manufacturing vaccines using the technique of mammalian cell culture. It employs world class technologies for robust, high containment manufacturing, which completely contains the viruses used to manufacture vaccines inside production suites, thereby enabling safe, stable manufacture of vaccines to be used as public medical countermeasures against threats such as pandemic influenza, Ebola and Anthrax. In addition, Kalon utilises state-of-the-art mobile clean rooms (MCRs) featuring high containment, compactness and mobility. Up to twenty MCRs can be installed at the National Center for Therapeutics Manufacturing facility operated by Kalon. The MCRs enable concurrent manufacturing of several types of vaccines. Moreover, the ability to easily expand the number of MCRs allows for prompt response to increasing capacity demands.
These MCRs are suitable not only for cell-cultured vaccines, but also for all kinds of biopharmaceuticals, including antibodies, and meet the growing demand for high-variety low-volume manufacturing.

Fujifilm entered biopharmaceutical CMO business by acquiring FDBU and Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies UK Limited from Merck & Co., Inc in 2011 and has been expanding its businesses through the partnership with Mitsubishi Corporation, who has extensive experiences in the pharmaceutical business.