A year later, this bioprocess testbed continues to drive the transformation of life sciences
When research and bold ideas meet at the intersection of technology and biology, exciting ventures are bound to happen, especially in countries with a strong scientific tradition. Ranked as the world’s second-most innovative country, Sweden is a seasoned player in life sciences, an industry that is incrementally booming with the growing popularity of biotechnology.
With a wealth of specific know-how and world-class research, Sweden is keen on expanding its footprint as a leading innovator. In the past decade, government funding for R&D has increased by 25% as part of the country’s commitment to strengthening its innovative capacity. Supporting collaborations between science and industry has been a catalyst of positive change. Testa Center is proof that this approach is a win for all actors involved.
“Innovation is the foundation of future, and a way of thinking and acting collectively. Power lies in numbers, but also in shared ideas and strong beliefs. We started Testa to consolidate a stronger community that brings together researchers from academia, start-ups, and biopharma to explore the undiscovered potential of life sciences,” says Lotta Ljungqvist, CEO of Testa Center and GE Nordics.
Opened in 2018 through a collaborative effort between the Swedish government and GE Healthcare Life Sciences, Testa Center is a bioprocess pilot-scale facility that progresses the development of biomanufacturing. The government invested around EUR 10 million through Vinnova, its innovation agency, while GE infused around EUR 4.5 million.
Spreading across some 2500 m2, the facility boasts four cell culture and protein purification laboratories equipped with the latest available technology from GE Healthcare Life Sciences. Here, academics, start-ups and biopharma companies can test and verify their discoveries, while maintaining full ownership of intellectual property and data.
The hype on Testa Center is well-justified. The first-of-its-kind and only bioprocess testbed facility in the whole of Scandinavia, the facility has already hosted fifteen projects, and more than 2000 visits since its inauguration. In less than a year, it has become an important innovation hub for the ecosystem of life sciences in Scandinavia.
The center is operated by GE, which also hosts the facility on its site premises in Uppsala, Sweden.
The first biotechnology company to run a project at Testa Center is BioLamina, which used the facility to scale-up its production capacity and deliver more reagents to its global customer base.
“The opportunity to set-up and scale-up our production process at Testa Center gave us the possibility to simultaneously design and establish the process in-house, which significantly shortened the project timeline,” says Ludwina Retzer, Head of Production at BioLamina.
For Toleranzia, a Gothenburg-based biotech company based in Gothenburg, validating their manufacturing process at Testa Center has been a great achievement. The manufacturing of TOL2, the company’s drug candidate for the myasthenia gravis neuromuscular disease, was scaled up by 40 times.
Four additional projects are expected to start at Testa Center before the end of the year.
“The interest in Testa Center is growing. We already see fantastic results after the first year, and we are confident that the next years will bring groundbreaking discoveries to the industry,” says Jesper Hedberg, Director of Testa Center.
You might also be interested in reading the latest press release about Testa Center here.
