Vibalogics establishes US presence with virotherapy facility in Boston

The specialist CDMO's $150 million 3-year investment plan will provide a complete suite of virotherapy services to support drug developers and their most "revolutionary" products.

The 3-year investment plan includes the build out of a 110,000 sq. ft facility totalling $150 million across redevelopment, equipment and personnel.

The CDMO, which specializes in manufacturing oncolytic viruses, viral vector vaccines and viral vector gene therapy products, expects the site to be operational by the second half of 2021.

The facility will be equipped with state-of the-art technology and enable a significant capacity increase, including 2000-L scale bioreactors and additional fill-finish capabilities.

According to Vibalogics’ CEO, Tom Hochuli, the site will provide a complete suite of virotherapy services to support drug developers and their most "revolutionary" products.

He said: "The addition of a late-stage clinical and commercial facility means we can easily tech transfer our customers’ products from our early-phase manufacturing facility in Germany to the US, resulting in a complete end-to-end service from pre-clinical to commercial supply."

The facility is expected to create 100 jobs initially, reaching 250 employees during the next 4 years.

For the past 15 years, Vibalogics has specialized in the manufacturing of oncolytic viruses, viral vector vaccines and viral vectors offering process development, manufacturing, testing and fill-finish services for early phase clinical trials.

Stefan Beyer, President and Managing Director of Vibalogics GmbH said: “The decision to expand stems from high demand for biomanufacturing services and development capacity in viral vector vaccines and oncolytic viruses and is an important step in integrating our future late-phase and commercial operations into our business.”

The company was recently selected by Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies, a Johnson & Johnson company, as one of its manufacturing partners for its investigational COVID-19 vaccine candidate.