Cambrex Completes Durham Expansion

Cambrex Corp., a global provider of small-molecule drug services with growing operations in High Point and Durham, has finished an expansion of its biopharmaceutical analysis capabilities in Durham.

New instruments at the facility include those for particle analysis, imaging, qPCR, fluorescent/absorbance plate reader, immunoblotting, mass spectrometry and other compendial testing apparati, the company said in a news release. The new capabilities are applicable to a broad variety of biopharmaceuticals, including bacteriophage/bacterial virus and mammalian viral infectious titer assays for intermediates, drug substances and final drug products.

“The expansion began in response to a customer request to support a Biosafety Level 1 organism and grew from there based on broader customer response,” said Elliott Franco, Cambrex’s Durham site director. “We remain committed to adopting the best-in-class technologies customers need access to. Our comprehensive expertise, coupled with a transparent, safety-driven approach to implementing the new equipment, allow the Cambrex team to better serve customers across the life of their processes.”

Ongoing assay additions are also planned at Durham, including impedance-based orthogonal methods for existing and new cell-based potency assays, and protein-protein interaction/binding assays. 

The company did not respond to requests for details about employment growth at the Durham site, which Cambrex acquired in 2019 as part of its purchase of Avista Pharma Solutions for about $252 million.

Growing in High Point too

In 2018 Cambrex announced a $30 million expansion of its High Point facility that would add 78 new employees by 2021, bringing its total head count there to about 150. That’s nearly triple the number it had in October 2016 when it established its business there by acquiring PharmaCore, a privately held clinical contract manufacturer, for $25 million.

The High Point facility produces complex active pharmaceutical ingredients and intermediates requiring multi-step synthetic processes in batch sizes from milligrams to 100 kg in support of clinical trials from Phase 1 through to Phase 3. The site is licensed by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to manufacture Schedule II to Schedule V controlled substances. 

Cambrex, headquartered in East Rutherford, N.J., provides drug substance, drug product and analytical services across the entire drug lifecycle for small-molecule therapeutics. The company has more than 2,000 employees in North America and Europe.

Founded in 1983, Cambrex was a publicly held company until late 2019, when it was purchased by a global private equity firm, an affiliate of the Permira Funds, for about $2.4 billion.