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Area Development - Site Selection, Facility Planning and Workforce Development

Arranta Bio Plans Boxborough, Massachusetts, GMP Manufacturing Complex

03/09/2021
Arranta Bio, a leading microbiome contract development and manufacturing organization, expanded operations with the addition of a 130,000-square-foot facility in Boxborough, Massachusetts. The project is expected to create more than 250 jobs.

Total investment in Boxborough is expected to exceed $150 million, and with the first phases of construction underway, start-up of GMP suites is expected early in 2022. According to company officials the addition brings the total manufacturing capacity at Arranta to over 230,000 square feet. The company said it closed an oversubscribed Series B equity financing from its current investors to fund the expansion.

"We are excited by the recent clinical results that demonstrate the potential of microbiome therapies to positively impact patient outcomes in a broad range of diseases," Mark Bamforth, Executive Chair and CEO of Arranta Bio, said. "This new facility demonstrates Arranta's commitment to support the increasing maturity of the microbiome live biotherapeutic product sector by offering innovators best-in-class development and GMP manufacturing capabilities that support their programs from lab to market."

The GMP manufacturing suites are designed to be flexible in scale, size and design to accommodate client and product-specific processing requirements for both drug substance and finished drug product. Initial multi-client capacity will include up to multiple 2,000L scale single-use bioreactors for anaerobic bacteria or 1,000L scale single-use fermenters for aerobic bacteria and fully automated drug product manufacturing. Additionally, Arranta plans to add secondary packaging and labeling capabilities at the facility.

"In discussions with leading microbiome innovators, we see strong interest in dedicated client capacity and new manufacturing capabilities to meet the commercial supply needs of this sector," David Stevens, President and COO of Arranta Bio, added. "We are continuing to expand our organization, adding experience and skills to meet clients' needs, and expect to have over 200 on our team by the end of 2021 and up to 500 employees once fully staffed."

Arranta invested more than $100 million in 2020 to expand its process development and early clinical GMP supply capacity at its campus in Gainesville, and established a state-of-the-art, multi-product, commercial-ready manufacturing facility in Watertown. The Watertown facility was completed at the end of 2020 and is now being commissioned to supply live biotherapeutic products (LBPs) to microbiome innovator companies.

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