Factor Bioscience held a ribbon-cutting ceremony in September to celebrate the opening of their new ISO Class 7 cleanroom facility in its Cambridge, MA headquarters. Wise Construction team members were in attendance at the grand opening to celebrate the successful project finish.
The fresh-cut ribbon officially opened the 5,000 square feet of completed ISO7 clean-rooms, an ISO8 clean-room supply and return space, infrastructure and utility space, and supporting office space. The Wise team used a design-build approach to convert the office building into a cGMP clinical manufacturing facility in partnership with DPS Group Global and R.W. Sullivan.
The cleanroom facility features a new rooftop unit, 125kW generator, exhaust fan, multiple research fans, a boiler and gas booster, and steel support dunnage framing the roof. During the initial construction period, the state of the office building created unique challenges for the team, such as limited access to gravity drains and shaft areas, low ceilings, and limited electrical service to the building. As a result, Wise added all-new mechanical shafts for air and vent services and installed all new Liquid Nitrogen distribution throughout the space for product storage. In addition, Wise brought in a new Building Automation, Environmental Monitoring, and Process Integration Systems.
Chairman and CEO Matt Angel, Ph.D., and Chief Technology Officer, Christopher Rohde, Ph.D., the Factor Bioscience co-founders, delivered speeches at the event alongside their strategic partners, Gregory Fiore, M.D., Co-Founder and CEO of Exacis Biotherapeutics Inc., and Howard Federoff, M.D., Ph.D., CEO of Brooklyn ImmunoTherapeutics, Inc. They each spoke about their excitement for the future of Factor Bioscience and the advances the new space now offers them. For example, the new facility will allow Factor’s team of scientists to produce advanced mRNA, gene-editing, and cell-therapy products for all phases of clinical development. In addition, it will accelerate their research in areas such as anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer, and regenerative medicine.
Describing the collaborative design and construction team effort, Dr. Angel said, “from a demolition zone, and then a construction zone, and then a state-of-the-art cleanroom facility here, again in the middle of a pandemic, with a shortage of materials and everything else, we really loved the effort.” The project is a great example of teamwork and how design-build collaboration can drive success on technically challenging build-outs.
Project Partners:
Client: Factor Bioscience https://factor.bio/
Construction Manager: Wise Construction
Architect: DPS Group Global https://www.dpsgroupglobal.com/
Lab Planner: TRIA https://tria.design/
Engineer: R.W. Sullivan https://www.rwsullivan.com/
