CordenPharma inaugurates improved Colorado peptide plant

CordenPharma says its Boulder, Colorado site has the capacity to produce more than 2 metric tons of peptides annually, following arecent investment.

Contract development and manufacturing organisation (CDMO) CordenPharma committed over €200 million ($215 million) in 2023 to expand its global peptide, lipids, and injectables capacity. Among the investments, CordenPharma made a $60 million investment into its facility in Boulder, Colorado to support a multi-year agreement for the contract manufacturing of a large-volume commercial peptide.

The self-described “largest Solid-Phase Peptide Synthesis (SPPS) manufacturing facility worldwide” was inaugurated earlier this month.

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“CordenPharma is pleased to celebrate the start of peptide production in our newly-upgraded and expanded SPPS (Solid-Phase Peptide Synthesis) manufacturing facility in Colorado with the largest worldwide peptide capacity available,” said Stéphane Varray, CordenPharma’s global peptide platform director. “These modernizations will allow for increased efficiency, throughput, and access to state-of-the-art technologies for streamlined commercial peptide API supply.”

Chief amongst the upgrades, the CDMO says it has improved the automation process to bring a reduction in overall cycle time, greater scale-up consistency and the elimination of human errors.

The optimisation also includes an upgrade of the existing 10,000 L reactor volume, with a batch size exceeding 400 kg and a yearly capacity of more than 2 metric tons of peptide. The firm has also modernized the infrastructure to increase efficiency of solvent delivery and effluent removal; an increase of 50% of the purification capacity, and the implementation of process analytical technologies (PAT) for amino acid identification to avoid errors in peptide sequence.

Talking to Global Business Reports back in April, Michael Quirmbach, CordenPharma CEO, explained his decision to invest in the peptide market. “Because there are currently more molecules reaching the market, larger quantities are required than a few years ago. As there are only a few companies who can handle this large-scale peptide manufacturing, CordenPharma is perfectly positioned to answer this demand with our world-class site in Colorado, which has space to expand and the capability to handle the extremely large volume of solvents required for the purification of multi 100 kgs of the peptide.”

More jobs are also on the table, according to CordenPharma, with 60 new positions to be added on top of the more than 500 employees already working at the Colorado facility.