Apr. 6—Opening day on the horizon for new biosciences facility
By Savannah Howe
After 10 months, hundreds of hours worked and the installation of millions of parts, the future Nu-Tek biosciences facility in Austin is coming closer to operational status.
The facility, slated to be running full-swing by the end of this year's third quarter, produces nutritional matter for the cells used to manufacture vaccines and other pharmaceuticals that are distributed globally, primarily cancer treatments, according to Nu-Tek CEO Tom Yezzi.
The facility will span 53,000 feet, climb nearly 10 stories high and employ roughly 35-40 people in the plant itself. However, Nu-Tek has its sights set on more: according to the CEO, the company's vision is to expand its singular plant to an end-to-end pharmaceutical manufacturing compound within the next four years, which would jump the site's total jobs on the back-end and on site by up to 500%.
It quickly became apparent to the pharmaceutical development industry that end-to-end manufacturing—where vaccines or drugs are produced through all stages, from raw material to active pharmaceutical, on the same site—was an ideal goal to work towards, Yezzi explained. The COVID pandemic exposed shortcomings in the current manufacturing system.
"What they found is that there's all these gaps," Yezzi said. "In bringing in raw materials from overseas, they have to make an intermediate [material] at another facility that then has to be transferred to another facility to make the vaccine, and then taken to another facility to do the fill and finish. So what they saw are all these gaps that hindered the ability to quickly respond to something like a pandemic."
And Austin is just the place to do it, Yezzi said. The southeastern Minnesota city is situated amongst a hub of biomedical research and activity: The Hormel Institute, the Mayo Clinic Health System and the University of Minnesota.
"We will bring big pharma to Austin," Yezzi said, elaborating that the biosciences company wants to bring the manufacturing side of the pharmaceutical industry into southern Minesota. Nu-Tek's ultimate goal is "a little campus here where we can put up buildings for the different manufacturing stages," he continued.
Yezzi explained that the Austin facility is historic in that it may be the first or one of the first brand-new biosciences facilities dedicated to only using plant protein material in the early stages of pharmaceutical development. Older facilities, he said, may use both animal-component proteins (derived from meat or dairy products) and plant proteins, or may have converted a dedicated animal-component facility to a plant protein facility.