Fujifilm Texas visit punctuates biotech work
Fujifilm president Kenji Sukeno traveled from Japan to College Station last week with a delegation of corporate officials to tour its Texas facility and to announce an expansion in the company’s burgeoning biotechnology presence in the state.
Fujifilm, best known for its photography footprint, purchased Kalon Biotherapeutics, an existing biotech firm in College Station, in 2014 as part of a transition into the health care market.
The company was then renamed Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies and began to center its focus on developing new drugs and treatments for biopharmaceutical customers.
Kalon was seen as a strategic acquisition because of its work developing flu vaccines and an established relationship with the U.S. government.
Since the purchase, Fujifilm’s Texas workforce has doubled in size to 153, officials said. About 30 more employees are expected to be added this fiscal year.
Also, Fujifilm announced late last year a $19 million investment in its Texas operation for a project called Saturn mAb Platform, which focuses on the production of monoclonal antibodies. Biopharmaceutical companies are developing these antibodies as therapies for a wide array of treatments including immunotherapies to fight cancer and other diseases.
The $19 million is part of a larger $130 million investment by Fujifilm to expand its biopharmaceutical contract development and manufacturing business, known as Bio CDMO, officials said.
Part of the Texas tour last week was to celebrate that the Saturn mAb facility has met federal compliance and regulatory guidelines and is now fully operational. Officials hinted there is more expansion to come.
Fujifilm began to broaden its gaze beyond the photography industry in the early 2000s as executives saw the decline in traditional film production. Health care seemed a logical choice, officials said, as the global and Japanese populations were aging.
“One of the most important things for Fujifilm is to make a difference to society,” Steve Bagshaw, CEO of Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies, said in an interview with the Chronicle. His division has locations not only in College Station but in North Carolina and the United Kingdom.
Bagshaw said the technology behind film production was a surprisingly easy transfer to the innovations occurring in biomedical research and the exploding health care market.
Texas was seen as especially fertile ground because of its attractive business climate as well as its hunger to become a player in the biomedical field.
“Texas was being very vocal about wanting to expand in the area of health care,” said Andy Fenny, senior vice president of Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnolgies.
Fenny said the state has given generous financial incentives to help lure companies like his in its quest to become the socalled third coast in biotechnology research.
“They have put their money where their mouth is,” he said.
“Developers of cellculture-based therapies need reliable and proven partners with the development and manufacturing experience to support the delivery for therapies to patients,” Sukeno said in a statement.
The company has said it expects $900 million in sales worldwide in its Bio CDMO division by March 2024.
Fenny predicted the future of medicine will center on personalized treatments, especially using gene therapies.
“Texas,” he said, “is the only Fujifilm location that currently has the technologies and skill set to do that.”