Advancing Biopharma Workflows: Bridgewater Innovation Center's Role in Accelerating Therapies
Avantor’s flagship Bridgewater Innovation Center was created to optimize biomanufacturing materials and processes at scale, helping biopharmaceutical companies accelerate delivery of vital patient therapies to market. Image: Courtesy of Avantor
Life sciences and advanced technologies industries company Avantor has opened its Innovation Center in Bridgewater, NJ. The Bridgewater Innovation Center is the flagship of Avantor’s global network of 13 research and innovation centers, equipped and staffed to focus on problem solving, collaboration, and bringing life sciences and advanced materials solutions to market faster. The state-of-the-art facility in New Jersey supports Avantor customers’ pipelines across monoclonals, cell and gene therapy, and mRNA, and features a development and application area, including a viral vector laboratory.
The project team consisted of Turner Construction Company (construction manager), HLW (architects), and Vanderweil Engineers (engineers, working under HLW), who collaborated closely with the Avantor/VWR furniture team to design and deploy Avantor’s own furniture into the space.
Lab Design News spoke to Benoit Gourdier, executive vice president, bioscience production segment at Avantor, about the design and capabilities of the Bridgewater Innovation Center and its role in accelerating biopharma workflows, fostering collaboration, and supporting innovative therapies.
Q: What were the key design objectives when planning the expanded Innovation Center, and how were these influenced by Avantor's commitment to supporting gene therapy, monoclonals, and mRNA workflows?
A: The mission of Avantor’s flagship Bridgewater Innovation Center is shaped by the company’s commitment to setting science in motion to accelerate and optimize customers’ biomanufacturing processes, with a focus on cell and gene therapy, monoclonal antibodies, and mRNA workflows.
From the outset, we focused on designing an expansive collaboration space where our customers and our team of PhD scientists and process engineers could satisfy our customers’ evolving needs for more rapid solution development, reducing biomanufacturers’ time and resource burdens and enabling them to pivot seamlessly between various therapeutic areas.
The facility’s layout and flow are structured to enhance connectivity across specialized labs to reduce operational breaks and foster more efficient process integration. The facility also features an expanded pilot plant that enables us to effectively simulate production scale-ups and more rapidly produce stable outputs, as well as a quality control lab that enables rapid materials characterization and analysis to ensure stability, repeatability, and compliance with high regulatory standards.
Q: How did Avantor approach the integration of multiple specialized labs (e.g., viral vector laboratory, upstream/downstream process development, chemistry/material science) to ensure seamless functionality across all modalities?
A: Avantor’s approach to integrating specialized labs within the Bridgewater Innovation Center was driven by our desire to create a true center of innovation for bioscience and bioprocessing advances. The specialized labs leverage our differentiated product portfolio and the expertise of our PhD scientists, biopharma engineers, biologists, and bioengineers to troubleshoot and optimize our customers’ biomanufacturing processes at scale in a dynamic co-development environment.
Our customers are focused on developing and delivering needed therapies to market as rapidly as possible. To do this, we designed the lab spaces, technology, and processes to deliver seamless connectivity between critical stages of R&D. We doubled the size of our viral vector lab to better equip our upstream development labs to address the challenges associated with this critical bioprocess step.
The Bridgewater Innovation Center emphasizes fluid workflows, linking these specialized labs to allow for real-time data and insight sharing, enabling quicker problem-solving and iterative improvements.
By co-locating key laboratories—such as viral vector labs, upstream and downstream processing, and chemistry/material science testing and analytical labs—we created an ecosystem that enables rapid transitions and cross-functional collaborations without operational silos.
Q: Can you elaborate on the specific design features that make the pilot labs more flexible and scalable for production of novel excipients, resins, and biopharma reagents?
A: Key design elements include pairing lab spaces that focus on development of novel reagents, buffer formulations, resins, and excipients with bioprocess analytical labs and teams. They are organized and equipped to do deep dives into process and materials challenges, for our customers and for Avantor’s product innovation efforts.
The new 60,000-square-foot research and product development facility, located in Bridgewater, NJ includes expansive collaboration spaces, upstream and downstream process development, and expanded viral vector laboratory and pilot plant for scale-up simulations to support biopharmaceutical customers with problem-solving and rapid customization. Image: Courtesy of Avantor
The labs have been designed to make analytics and product development operate hand in hand. As Avantor works on synthesizing new buffers, reagents or chromatography resins, or engineer new and improved chemistries like amino acids, they can be tested in the upstream and downstream labs to validate their performance, then put into pilot production to confirm that the new materials or processes are scalable.
This adaptable infrastructure enables the production and testing of a range of critical materials at every step of product development and scale-up. Avantor has developed advanced analytical tools and techniques to effectively explore upstream and downstream process modification, new chemistries, and novel materials.
Q: How does the expanded capacity and talent at the Bridgewater Innovation Center contribute to faster production scale-up for customers' biopharma projects?
A: The expanded capacity and advanced expertise at our Bridgewater Innovation Center directly optimizes and accelerates production scale-up for biopharma projects across multiple modalities. This new 60,000 sf facility features significantly expanded labs and scientific staff, equipping Avantor to support a wider array of biopharma modalities under one roof.
Our scientists and biopharma engineers bring diverse expertise, strengthened by the industry’s most advanced equipment, including new single-use products for the pilot plant, and supported with a fully integrated QC lab. This infrastructure enables in-house testing, reducing turnaround times and enhancing process validation during each phase of the scale-up.
By combining analytical, bioanalytical and pilot-scale production capabilities in one seamless environment, we create a streamlined workflow that minimizes transfer times and promotes rapid problem-solving. Our collaboration spaces allow clients to work alongside our team, viewing and contributing to processes in real time. These spaces help ensure that we are not just a vendor but an integral partner in the scientific journey from research through scale-up and production.
Q: What role did sustainability play in the design and construction of the new Innovation Center, particularly in terms of energy efficiency, waste reduction, and material selection?
A: From the start, LEED certification was included in the design considerations/requirements. We are striving to meet LEED Silver rating at the facility. There are still commissioning and other activities in-progress for this, and we expect to receive the certification in Q1-Q2 2025. The lab design and equipment selection were done to reduce utility waste and to streamline operations on site.
Q: How will the new site facilitate more collaborative approaches to R&D and customized solutions for customers' pipeline projects across various therapies, including cell and gene therapies?
A: The Bridgewater Innovation Center’s physical design, lab organization, and world-class team of scientists all combine to enable a collaborative environment. Customers and our process developers and engineers draw on our products, real-time analytical and QC data and process knowledge to troubleshoot and optimize processes in unique solutions co-developed with customers.
Our open lab layout and dedicated collaboration zones allow customers to work directly with our team of PhD scientists, biopharma engineers, and other experts at each critical phase of development. By facilitating direct interactions within an adaptable environment, we scale solutions that are fully aligned with customers’ unique requirements to expedite development timelines and ensure high reproducibility from research through scale-up.
At the same time, Avantor has a robust, real-world environment for developing, testing, and refining new additions to our differentiated product portfolio, leveraging the advances we make on specific customer process challenges to enhance the value and innovation we are able to contribute to the bioprocessing industry.
Q: What were the biggest challenges faced during the design and construction process, especially with regard to integrating advanced technologies like single-use systems and the latest bioprocessing equipment?
A: Since this was an office-to-lab conversion, the biggest engineering challenge faced was incorporating all R&D and production utilities into a low ceiling height facility. The above-ceiling mechanical and engineering plans were complex and enabled us to focus on incorporating single-use systems into our workflows to reduce reliance on hard-piped utilities like steam, which are expensive to build and maintain.
Q: Looking to the future, how do you envision the expanded Innovation Center contributing to Avantor's role in driving innovation within the biopharma sector, particularly in the rapidly evolving gene therapy and mRNA fields?
A: With the state-of-the-art Bridgewater Innovation Center, Avantor is well positioned contribute to drive innovation in the sector. It will enhance our ability to expand customer collaboration, support deeper hands-on technical training and develop the background technology to enable rapid customization to address emerging challenges. Overall, the improved facility design with additional lab space dedicated to mRNA and gene-therapy based workflows will enable us to not only collaborate with customers, but also drive internal product development activities. These novel modalities need several specialized cGMP reagents and excipients which are being developed at the Bridgewater Innovation Center.
