Ther­mo Fish­er has com­plet­ed the ex­pan­sion of one of its man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ties in New York, tak­ing an­oth­er step for­ward in its broad­er in­vest­ment plan for sites in the US and glob­al­ly.

The $76 mil­lion ex­pan­sion of its dry pow­der me­dia man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ty in Grand Is­land, New York, just north of Buf­fa­lo, will al­low more ca­pac­i­ty to sup­port Ther­mo Fish­er’s glob­al sup­ply and ex­tend its ca­pa­bil­i­ties for ma­te­ri­als used in vac­cines and bi­o­log­ic ther­a­py de­vel­op­ment and man­u­fac­tur­ing.

The Grand Is­land ex­pan­sion was an­nounced ear­li­er last year as part of the com­pa­ny’s $650 mil­lion in­vest­ment in­to sev­er­al in­fra­struc­ture projects to in­crease its bio­pro­cess­ing pro­duc­tion. That in­vest­ment in­cludes site ex­pan­sions across the US, UK, Sin­ga­pore and Chi­na.

“Our ex­pand­ed Grand Is­land site rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone in our in­vest­ment to dou­ble our to­tal man­u­fac­tur­ing ca­pac­i­ty by the end of 2023. With the har­mo­nized ca­pa­bil­i­ties of our glob­al man­u­fac­tur­ing sites that en­able us to prove equiv­a­len­cy in man­u­fac­tur­ing, we’re able to sup­port cur­rent de­mand while prim­ing for fu­ture growth and con­tin­u­ous­ly en­hanc­ing our cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence glob­al­ly,” said Kate Torchilin, pres­i­dent of bi­o­log­i­cals and chem­i­cals at Ther­mo Fish­er, in a state­ment.

The ex­pan­sion adds more than 45,000 square feet of man­u­fac­tur­ing space for the pro­duc­tion of Gib­co Ad­vanced Gran­u­la­tion Tech­nol­o­gy (AGT) and dry pow­der me­dia as well as cell cul­tures and liq­uid sup­ple­ments.

Ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny, the ad­di­tion­al space will al­so help ac­cel­er­ate the de­vel­op­ment and pro­duc­tion of bio­ther­a­peu­tics and vac­cines, and al­low process ca­pa­bil­i­ties and equip­ment to pro­vide pro­duc­tion re­dun­dan­cy and short­en prod­uct man­u­fac­tur­ing lead times.

The Grand Is­land ex­pan­sion is ex­pect­ed to add 100 em­ploy­ees across roles in R&D, op­er­a­tions, man­u­fac­tur­ing, HR, en­gi­neer­ing and main­te­nance. Ther­mo Fish­er cur­rent­ly em­ploys more than 1,600 peo­ple at the Grand Is­land site and more than 3,000 peo­ple across the state of New York.

Ac­cord­ing to Ther­mo Fish­er, the site has been in op­er­a­tion for more than 60 years and home to Gib­co cell prod­ucts, which are wide­ly used in bio­man­u­fac­tur­ing world­wide.

Ear­li­er this year Ther­mo Fish­er opened a $44 mil­lion fa­cil­i­ty in Og­den, Utah, that will man­u­fac­ture high­ly cus­tomiz­able bio­process con­tain­er sys­tems as a part of the spend­ing spree.

89bio said its drug was better than placebo at lessening fibrosis without worsening nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, or NASH, in two of three dose groups.

The San Francisco biotech said it thinks the Phase IIb data pave the way for a potential Phase III, following in the footsteps of another biotech in its drug class, Akero Therapeutics. To fund a late-stage study, CEO Rohan Palekar told Endpoints News 89bio “would need to raise additional capital,” with the company having about $188 million at the end of last year.