"The drug got approval from the US FDA recently and will soon be available in Scotland too, after receiving European regulatory approval," the facility's engineering manager, Mr Ian McLean, told BioSpectrum in March during a visit to the manufacturing unit.

The Grangemouth facility is one of Piramal Healthcare's eight manufacturing units around the world and is one of the world's first such unit to make ADCs commercially on contract. Piramal works with 11 of the 16 global users of ADCs. Piramal has invested nearly $3 million to upgrade the facilities with quality control labs and new manufacturing suites in recent years. The company received significant assistance from Scottish Enterprise, the Scottish government agency that supports businesses in Scotland.

"The expansion of Piramal's Grangemouth facilities is further evidence of Scotland's growing reputation as the ideal place to locate and do business. Investment like this provides new jobs and delivers new business opportunities and supply chain development across the local economy and throughout Scotland," said Ms Linda Hanna, company growth director, Scottish Enterprise.

Stem cells leader

Just outside Edinburgh, located in the Pentlands Science Park, is a unique company, Angel Biotech. This publicly listed biotech firm is a leading contract manufacturer of stems cells that are used in a variety of new regenerative therapies.

"Our mammalian cell culture team has extensive experience in cell line selection, cloning, cell banking and process scale-up with xenogeneic, allogeneic and autologous primary human stem cells and other stem cell therapies," said Angel Biotech's acting CEO, Dr Stewart White.