South Korea’s Samsung BioLogics said on Monday its new plant in Songdo has successfully adopted advanced cell growth technology called N-1 perfusion, cutting production time by up to 30 percent.

The cell growth technology was introduced to the CDMO`s third biomanufacturing plant in March to boost cell concentration and productivity with parallel processing of cell growth and impurity removal at a stage (N-1) just before the final cell culture stage (N).

Cell concentration can be raised by up to 10 times with this technology as the impurities and waste from cell growth in the incubator are filtered out, with fresh medium in continuous supply to the cells left in the incubator, according to the company. This makes it possible to grow more cells by improving the incubator uptime in the N-1 stage.

The company’s third plant, the world’s single largest one, was designed to accommodate the technology from the beginning.

This represents the plant’s scale-up to ensure commercial production for customers, allowing them to choose cell culture methods and processes as they want, which will increase chances of winning new orders, said John Lim, vice president at Samsung BioLogics.

Shares of Samsung BioLogics gained 6.31 percent to trade at 286,500 won ($236) as of 2:40 pm in Korea.

By Kim Byung-ho and Minu Kim

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