Dow Drops Cell Culture-based Production Plan

Dow Chemical will close its biopharmaceutical contract manufacturing facility in Smithfield, R.I., and end its effort to enter the business of mammalian cell culture biomanufacturing.

The Smithfield site, acquired in 2000 from Collaborative BioAlliance, included a small microbial fermentation facility that Dow intended to expand into mammalian cell production. However, Nick Hyde, business director of Dowpharma, says market conditions for mammalian cell culture technology "have not evolved to the point the industry anticipated just a few years ago."

Dow says it will instead focus its biopharmaceutical efforts on new expression systems that clients can use in the production of therapeutic proteins and peptides. The firm is consolidating process development efforts at its biotech center in San Diego and recently launched Pseudomonas fluorescens expression technology for the microbial production of recombinant proteins. Dow is also focusing on plant-based systems, which Hyde says can offer rapid scale-up and higher productivity for complex proteins.

Adding mammalian cell culture production would have launched Dow into the ranks of firms like Lonza, DSM, Akzo Nobel, and Avecia that offer both chemical and fermentation production. In its half-year earnings report, Lonza reported low capacity utilization for some of its smaller mammalian cell culture production vessels due to customer cancellations. The firm said customer demand is strong for a much larger 20,000-L vessel that it is commissioning at its Portsmouth, N.H., site.