The company said it will continue to develop its biopharmaceutical contract manufacturing business by building on new developments in protein and peptide expression technologies.
"Biotechnology is a dynamic industry and demands agility," said Nick Hyde, business director at Dowpharma. "The decision to close the Smithfield facility, formerly owned by Collaborative BioAlliance (CBA), is driven by changes in the biotech industry specifically around mammalian cell culture technology."
"One of the reasons for our decision to purchase CBA in 2000 was a forecast of additional mammalian cell culture capacity needed to supply the market. Market conditions for this technology have not evolved to the point the industry anticipated just a few years ago."
He continued that the firm has decided to sharpen its focus on technologies for the rapid process development and scale-up of production processes for therapeutic proteins and peptides.
To enable this, Dow previously announced the consolidation of its process development capability at its biotechnology center in San Diego and recently launched its Pseudomonas fluorescens expression technology for the production of recombinant proteins.
This novel technology can increase cellular expression while maintaining critical solubility and activity characteristics of recombinant proteins.
Also this year, Dowpharma announced a new peptides offering, including expression and purification strategies for cost effective manufacturing.
Dowpharma will also focus on plant-based systems, having made several recent announcements about its expanded offerings to the industry in antibody expression and peptide expression. "These offerings allow both rapid scale up and higher productivity for complex proteins," Hyde added.