Testa Center inaugurated!

Construction work has been intensive, but now the new innovation centre for bioprocess technology has opened its doors to an exciting future. On 21 August, Testa Center – Sweden’s national test environment for verifying biological and technological tools used in manufacturing biologics or biopharmaceuticals – was officially inaugurated. And the first projects are ready to move in and get going!

Today, eight of the ten best-selling drugs are biological. What’s more, the market for biological drugs is expected to grow strongly. Close to 300 candidate substances are in clinical trials and this number rises to more than 7000 if the research component of pharmaceutical development projects is also included. However, manufacturing biological drugs is complicated and very costly, and there is thus a great need for new production methods and technologies to drive large-scale efficiency.

Major government initiative
The Swedish government intends to make Sweden a global leader in the research, development and production of biopharmaceutical products. To secure this goal, it has, through active collaboration with VINNOVA and GE Healthcare, established Testa Center as a new, state-of-the-art facility for verifying innovative projects. The goal is to build up a creative and open environment where academic groups, start-ups and larger companies can verify technical or biological projects in an authentic bioprocessing facility.

Even institutions of higher education are encouraged to run training courses in the centre in order to ensure that Sweden possesses sufficient competence in this field. Today, many companies have difficulty finding employees skilled in, for example, large-scale cell culture or protein purification, two key technologies in the manufacture of biological products.

First projects ready to move in
The decision to build Testa Center was announced in 2016 and construction work at GE Healthcare’s site in Boländerna, Uppsala, got under way shortly after. The winter of 2017/2018, with its heavy falls of snow, meant many exceptional challenges for everyone involved, but despite this, the building work was completed on schedule. After intensive work during this summer to install and commission all the equipment, Testa Center is now ready to welcome its first projects.

Do you have an innovative technology that could improve the future’s bio-pharmaceutical production? Or are you interested in producing biological products? If so, Testa Center may be for you. Moreover, during a start-up period, we have access to verification funding from Swelife for projects with commercialisation potential. Feel free to contact Helena Ströberg, helena.stroberg@uppsalabio.com, or Kristin Hellman, kristin.hellman@uppsalabio.com, to discuss the matter further!