Samabriva Accelerates its Growth With New State-of-the-Art Biomanufacturing Facility

Samabriva recently announced the opening of a new 1,400 m² biomanufacturing facility in Liege, Belgium, at the heart of European’s biotech valley. This strategic investment strengthens Samabriva’s position as a leading player in the region’s thriving biomanufacturing ecosystem.

This multi-million Euros investment is designed to provide industrial scale production of high value natural molecules* used in the manufacture of pharmaceutical products. Equipped with Samabriva’s proprietary bioreactors, which have been specifically designed to maximize production in hairy root culture, the facility will enhance efficiency and output.

This announcement represents the next step in Samabriva’s growth strategy, marking the transition to industrial production following a decade of research and development. Phase one of the facility will be operational by Q1 2025 to meet the demands of the company’s first commercial international customers.

In addition to providing advanced manufacturing, the facility will create several new jobs across bioproduction, analytics and quality assurance, contributing to global economic growth. It will also provide customers with full control over the biomanufacturing process, offering a cost effective and sustainable alternative to open field production.

Pascal Lizin, Chairman of the Board of Samabriva, said “This new facility represents a significant milestone for Samabriva. It emphasises our commitment to delivering plant-based bioproduction at large scale. By offering control over the entire value chain, the facility has the potential to transform production of high value molecules – delivering them more cost-effectively to international customers, when and where they’re needed.”

Bertrand Duquesne, COO and QP for Samabriva Biomanufacturing, added “We are delighted to be implementing the high potential manufacturing platform that Samabriva has been developing over the last ten years on an industrial scale. The platform will enable GMP quality production of molecules of interest for our current and future customers.”

We’re a plant-based biotechnology company which has successfully developed a proprietary bioproduction platform that is already being used by the pharmaceuticals and cosmetics industry and potentially also by the food industry. For companies that need affordable production of high-value molecules our innovative, flexible system is a game-changing solution.

Samabriva’s platform combines the advantages of plant-based systems (low cost, safe, serum- and animal-free) with traditional bioproduction in large-scale bioreactors. This delivers continuous, cost effective and environmentally sustainable manufacture of a wide range of high value molecules all year round, in any location.

The manufacture of secondary metabolites currently lacks local scalable and sustainable production processes. Currently, secondary metabolites are mainly produced by growing plants in fields. However, extracting these compounds produces very small amounts from each plant. For example, one gram of vinblastine for chemotherapy treatment requires half a ton of dry leaves from the Madagascar periwinkle, Catharanthus roseus, making the process costly and environmentally unsustainable.

The manufacture of recombinant proteins currently lacks cost effective and contaminant free production processes. Recombinant proteins are typically produced in bacterial (Escherichia coli) or more commonly in mammalian (typically Chinese Hamster Ovary (CHO)) cell cultures. These bioproduction systems are complex and costly. Mammalian cell cultures often use animal-derived media that require extensive purification of the final product to avoid any risk of virus or prion transmission.

The increasing demand for these high value molecules* is driving the need to produce them at scale in a more controlled, cost effective and environmentally sustainable way.