Becton, Dickinson and Company opened the $59 million BD Biosciences - Advanced Bioprocessing AF2™ Production Facility in October of 2010 in Miami. The facility is the industry’s first fully dedicated, stand-alone “antibiotic-free” and “animal-free” facility for producing high-quality cell culture media and supplements that are used in the production of vaccines and biopharmaceuticals. BD invested more than $20 million in renovating 90,000 sf at the former IVAX Pharmaceuticals building in North Miami.
The design of BD’s new AF2 Production Facility is based on the stringent needs of biopharmaceutical manufacturers to significantly reduce the risk of product contamination. The new AF2 facility has been designed to meet cGMP (Current Good Manufacturing Practice) requirements, in order to deliver a new standard for safety and quality for cell culture media and supplements. Products manufactured in the new plant will be controlled for animal-origin component raw materials to the tertiary level, the most stringent level of control available. The new facility integrates cell culture media and supplement manufacturing capabilities, with the ability to produce complete formulations for the full range of expression systems for microbial fermentation, mammalian cell culture, and stem cell culture.
