Lonza invests to expand manufacturing capabilities at Oregon site

Lonza AG has announced a significant investment to expand its particle engineering and drug product capabilities to meet increased market demand at its Bend, Oregon site. New suites for the development and clinical manufacture of drug product intermediates and drug products utilizing spray-drying, hot-melt extrusion and melt-spray-congeal processing will be completed by May 2022. The first suite will expand early-phase spray-drying, tableting and encapsulation capability and is expected to be on-line by December 2020.

As part of the investment, the new cGMP suites will be added to support early-phase cGMP manufacture incorporating additional storage, gowning, and a customer in-plant viewing corridor. Non-cGMP capability for formulation and process development will also be expanded with one new suite.

The investment increases both capacity and flexibility across particle engineering and oral drug products, including immediate-release tablets, multiparticulates, and dry powder encapsulation for oral solid and inhaled applications.

Lonza Bend is the Center of Excellence for bioavailability enhancement and inhaled delivery for Lonza’s Small Molecules business unit. The Bend team has been at the forefront of advancing spray-drying and other particle engineering approaches to address solubility and other complex drug formulation and manufacturing challenges.