Gallus and GE Healthcare Win Global Bioprocessing Industry Award

Gallus BioPharmaceuticals, LLC, and GE Healthcare Life Sciences have been jointly recognized for the successful design and construction of an advanced single-use biomanufacturing facility as winners of the BioProcess International (BPI) Award for Excellence in Facility Design and/or Retrofit. Gallus BioPharmaceuticals was recently acquired by DPx Holdings B.V. and now operates under the Patheon business unit.

Gallus and GE Healthcare together designed and built an advanced contract manufacturing facility in just nine months. Utilizing GE Healthcare’s FlexFactory™, a flexible single-use biomanufacturing platform, enabled Gallus to expand its offering to include a “virtual ownership” model in addition to the traditional pay-per-run approach.

Virtual ownership gives clients control of dedicated capacity without the outlay of traditional capital investment, as well as the ability to access capacity as needed. During the build, existing office space was stripped back to a shell then converted into a cleanroom environment, including airflow and drainage, into which elements of the FlexFactory platform were installed. Following validation, a total of 23 successful early-phase product bioreactor runs have now been completed for multiple clients over the last 18 months.

Mark W. Bell, chief manufacturing officer of the legacy Gallus business, shared: “The FlexFactory is an important part of our growing business, providing customers with rapid supply of their GMP biotherapeutics. Fast turn-around with a scalable technology from 50L to 2000L built on an integrated platform that includes an all-in-one suite approach to media, buffer, bioreactor and purification technologies is a first for our industry. The customer demand has been so strong that we are already expanding our original FlexFactory capacity. We are delighted that our joint success in this project with GE Healthcare Life Sciences has been recognized by industry experts.”

Parrish Galliher, GE Healthcare Life Sciences, commented: “We are honoured to receive this award alongside Gallus, and it is a pleasure to receive such great recognition from our peers. Widespread adoption of single-use technologies is going to be crucial in the manufacture of proteins for the treatment of diseases such as cancer and rheumatoid arthritis. The winning facility, built around our FlexFactory biomanufacturing platform, is a clear example of how single-use technologies are now playing a major role in supporting the cost-effective development of biotherapeutics.”

Manja Bouman, president of the Patheon biologics business, noted: “We are proud of the Gallus team’s success, and we look forward to continuing to receive achievement awards such as this in the future. We are pleased to expand our biologic drug substance offering to our customers.”