Texas biotech expands R&D and manufacturing capabilities following Catalent partnership
Only months after Texas-based TFF Pharmaceuticals netted a partnership with Catalent, the company is expanding its R&D and manufacturing operations in the capital of the Lone Star State, through the lease of a new 3,500-square-foot facility.
The new space will be centered on increasing TFF’s total lab space. The expansion adds a dedicated lab for the downstream processing of products created via its thin film freezing as the company is looking to increase its in-house research. The additional lab space will allow the company to house larger equipment to scale up its manufacturing abilities and produce supplies for preclinical studies. TFF plans to take its new space online by August.
TFF also plans to expand its product development team in Austin, which will be based at the new facility but did not disclose the number of hands it wants to bring on. The lease arrangement was also used to finance the facility. TFF disclosed in an email to Endpoints News that the expansion was self-funded, but no hard figure was given.
According to the company, the facility was previously used as a healthcare testing laboratory and the company has, over the past two to three months, made modifications to enable product development and testing of their technology.
John Koleng“The Austin facility will enable us to increase testing capacity so that we can run a larger number of feasibility studies, including a focus on biologics where demand has continued to grow. Additionally, as many of our partnered programs move to clinical evaluation, the ability to scale-up manufacturing in parallel becomes mission critical,” said John Koleng, TFF’s VP of product development and manufacturing.
Koleng said in an email that TFF’s partner base has grown significantly in recent years and has seen an increased demand for the use of their technology, especially given its applications for hard-to-deliver modalities such as biologics.
TFF has been on the move this year, as in March, it inked a collaboration with Catalent focused on the generation, testing and manufacture of dry powder formulations. The company’s thin film freezing technology works on both small and large molecules. The process converts molecules into an inhaled dry powder, which delivers the drug directly to the lungs.
The company currently has four assets in its pipeline, two of which are in Phase II trials. They also have a partnership to develop an intranasal vaccine for influenza, Ebola, Marburg and alphaviruses.
