The National Institute for Bioprocessing Research and Training (NIBRT) and GE Healthcare have opened a new training center, where up to 1,500 professionals are expected to receive training annually. The NIBRT-GE Single-Use Centre of Excellence features the latest technologies that will further boost biomanufacturing skills and expertise in Ireland, Europe and globally.

Ireland is one of the world’s top biopharmaceutical manufacturing locations and has seen more than EUR 10 billion of investment in the past ten years from global companies. NIBRT has a key role in modernizing and supporting the sector’s infrastructure and talent development.

The institute is seeing increasing demand for single-use technologies or disposables that bring more flexibility to biomanufacturing, an important requirement as more precise therapies are being developed for smaller patient populations.

“NIBRT are delighted to launch today the NIBRT-GE Single-Use Centre of Excellence, which will enable us to provide high-quality training programs in all aspects of single-use biopharma manufacturing. In addition, we look forward to working with our clients on a broad range of process development and optimization activities in this innovative center,” said Dominic Carolan, CEO, NIBRT.

The new center will also support GE BioPark Cork; a GE-managed campus including four prefabricated, off-the-shelf biologics factories owned by independent biopharma companies manufacturing proprietary medicines, creating up to 500 jobs. The training center at NIBRT is where the personnel learn on the technologies that will be used at BioPark.

“The biopharma industry is growing rapidly; of the top ten therapeutics on the market today, eight are biopharmaceuticals. Our customers are constantly looking for flexible ways to improve capacity and the efficiency of their manufacturing operations. We need to foster innovation and partner with the best to respond to this need—with the NIBRT partnership and GE BioPark Cork we are doing exactly this,” said David Radspinner, general manager, BioPark, GE Healthcare.

The NIBRT-GE Single-Use Centre of Excellence is run by NIBRT and GE is the technology provider, delivering a fully integrated biomanufacturing platform based on single-use technologies to the center. The training activities are expected to be operational in autumn 2017, and the training offering is open for registration after the opening event. The partnership is initially signed for three years with the objective to upgrade the equipment after that, so that NIBRT would always have the top-of-the-line equipment at their institute.