Seattle-headquartered contract development and manufacturing organization AGC Biologics is building a new $350 million site in Yokohama, Japan, designed to expand its network capabilities by offering cell therapy, mammalian, and mRNA services.

AGC Biologics is expanding its Japanese operations to meet the growing demand for contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) services in the Asia-Pacific region. The company contends that the new Yokohama facility will enhance its regional production capabilities, providing greater efficiency across its global supply network.

Slated to begin GMP operations in 2027, the Yokohama site near Tokyo will ultimately house one of the largest single-use bioreactor systems for mammalian production in Japan, according to the company. The new site will feature two 5,000L and four 2,000L single-use mammalian cell culture bioreactors.

Last year, AGC Biologics announced that it selected two 5,000L Thermo Scientific DynaDrive single-use bioreactors for the Yokohama facility, positioning the site as “one of the most advanced in Japan” for large-scale, mammalian-based biologics production. At the time, the company claimed it had the second largest global network of single-use manufacturing capacity by volume in the industry.

With the Yokohama investment, AGC Biologics will have among the largest single-use mammalian capacity installed globally outside of China, according to CEO Alberto Santagostino.

“WuXi is by far the largest but if you don’t consider China-installed capacity, then Thermo and ourselves are among the two largest and I think that with the Yokohama investment we are probably the largest,” Santagostino told Pharma Manufacturing.

Once operational, the Yokohama site will support biologics manufacturing from early-phase development through commercial production. In addition to mammalian expression, the facility will accommodate cell therapy and mRNA-based drug products, aligning with broader industry trends toward next-generation therapies.

When it comes to mRNA services, the new site will have two in vitro transcription (IVT) lines, purification lines, and lipid nanoparticle (LNP) lines to allow for production up to 50g of mRNA using single-use technology.

“Yokohama is going to be mechanically completed by the end of this year, and we are going to start the first GMP batch in June/July of 2027,” Santagostino said. “The same facility has also mRNA operation, very large-scale pandemic responsiveness, and we have four cleanrooms for cell therapy. So, it’s a pretty all-in investment.”

In July 2025, the company started offering cell therapy process development services through its AGC Yokohama Technical Center, which was built in 2020. Next year, the new building in Yokohama will provide process transfer, development, cell manipulation, and engineering services by leveraging the autologous and allogeneic processes developed at the AGC Biologics Cell and Gene Technology Center of Excellence in Milan, Italy.

AGC Biologics also has an existing site in Chiba, Japan, which offers mammalian process development and microbial fermentation services. The new Yokohama facility is designed to benefit from close collaboration between the more than 1,000 scientists at its AGC Yokohama Technical Center and the Chiba site. Starting in 2027, projects can be transferred to the Yokohama facility for GMP manufacturing.

In December 2025, Fujifilm completed construction of one of Japan’s largest bio CDMO facilities at its Toyama Second Factory in Toyama Prefecture, marking the company’s first antibody drug manufacturing plant in the Asian country.

The facility, operated by Fujifilm Toyama Chemical and slated to begin operations in 2027, will serve as its bio CDMO hub in Asia with two 5,000L and two 2,000L single-use mammalian cell culture bioreactors designed to support manufacturing of antibody drugs and antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs).

Santagostino said that Fujifilm’s facility in Toyama should be basically “equivalent” to AGC Biologics’ Yokohama site when it comes to mammalian manufacturing. At the same time, he acknowledged that Fujifilm has “additional operations that we don’t” with ADC services, while AGC Biologics in Yokohama has decided to focus on cell and gene therapy (CGT).

“We prefer to focus on what we are really excellent at, which is CGT, and we stick to our partnership with Cerbios for the ADC,” Santagostino added, combining AGC Biologics’ expertise in monoclonal antibody production with Cerbios’ proficiency in bioconjugation and linker-payload. “We focus on what we are really good at, and we leverage our partner for the part where they are really good.”

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