Global life sciences leader Cytiva has acquired Intermountain Life Sciences, a manufacturer of high-purity water, buffers, and liquid cell culture media. Cytiva will use Intermountain’s manufacturing site in Utah to rapidly boost its liquid cell culture production by millions of liters. Hiring is ongoing to rapidly increase output.

• Combined with Cytiva’s existing manufacturing in Logan, Utah, Intermountain will boost global production of buffers and liquid cell culture media to Cytiva’s customers
• Responds to increased demand for products that are used in emerging modalities such as gene therapy, and are currently in high demand for the manufacture of COVID-19 vaccines and therapies
• Cytiva intends to hire dozens of people in the Greater Salt Lake City area to increase output of products

Olivier Loeillot, Vice President, Cytiva, says: “The demand for buffers and cell culture media has grown substantially in recent years thanks to their use in gene therapies, as well as their use in making COVID-19 vaccines and therapies. Adding the capacity and talent from Intermountain Life Sciences will allow us to accelerate deliveries to our customers.”

Intermountain’s site is already fully functional and running efficiently. Cytiva intends to build on that momentum and ramp up production through hiring. Loeillot says: “We’re really impressed with the quality practices that we see and we’ll be bringing dozens of people on board to build on the work already being done at the site.”

Russ Wilcox, President of Intermountain, says: “At Intermountain, we aim to be an innovative, responsive, and quality-driven outsourcing partner to the biotechnology industry. As part of Cytiva, we’ll continue on this mission at a larger scale.”

Process liquid products are experiencing rapid growth, and customers are shifting from internal production capabilities to outsourcing. The Intermountain site and its capabilities will become part of Cytiva’s cell culture media portfolio, which has a 40-plus year history in the Cache Valley and currently employs more than 700 people at its Logan, Utah facilities.

Intermountain Life Sciences was established in 2014 as a cGMP (current Good Manufacturing Practice) facility for manufacturing water for pharmaceutical purposes and custom process solutions for use in a broad spectrum of scientific research, medical device and biopharmaceutical manufacturing applications.