A design-build team led by contractor DPR Construction upgraded Biogen’s plant in North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park to help ease bottlenecks in one of the plant’s purification suites. The same team conducted a 2017 upgrade at the plant and was able to leverage its familiarity with the facility’s complexities to speed delivery. As upgrades were completed, the project team turned them over to Biogen for cell production. In total, there were six sequenced turnovers. In the end, the 14-week project was delivered under budget and six days ahead of schedule—just as the COVID-19 pandemic was beginning to take hold in portions of the U.S. The completed upgrades helped ease bottlenecks at the plant through installation of new in-line dilution low-pressure chromatography skids and associated improvements to buffer hold, buffer prep and product hold vessel capacities as well as ultrafiltration retentate and bulk hold vessel capacities. The upgrades will help with the manufacture of an investigational drug developed by Biogen to address the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease.

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