Kohjin Bio plans GMP culture media plant in Nagasaki, opening 2030

Kohjin Bio, a maker of cell culture media, announced on August 25, 2026 that it had signed a siting agreement with Nagasaki Prefecture and the city of Omura for a new plant. The plant will mainly produce media for growing cells used in regenerative medicine, under GMP-compliant controls, and will supply Japan and other Asian countries. The company calls it a core production base for future growth.

Operations are scheduled to start in 2030; the logistics news site LOGI-TODAY reported January 2030. When Kohjin Bio first proposed the site in July 2025, it expected to open in January 2028, so the schedule has slipped by about two years. The plant will stand in the second Omura Hi-Tech Park (第2大村ハイテクパーク) in Yugahara-machi, Omura, on about 25,000 m² of land. Kohjin Bio plans to staff it with 42 people, new hires and transfers combined, within five years of opening.

Media for regenerative medicine are a different business from media for antibody drugs. Antibody plants grow production cells in tanks of thousands of liters and make medium in large batches. Cytiva's doubling of liquid media capacity at its Utah site belongs to that high-volume side. In regenerative medicine and in cell therapies such as CAR-T, the cells are the product. Autologous therapies make one patient's dose at a time, so each batch uses little medium, and the right formulation differs by cell type. The medium also touches cells that end up in the patient, so its origin and quality need tight control as a raw material. Fetal bovine serum has been widely used, but its performance varies from lot to lot and it carries infection risks, so developers have been moving to serum-free and chemically defined media.

Once a process is locked, the medium is hard to change. A switch means showing again, with data, that the product has not changed. More domestic suppliers would give Japanese cell therapy developers and hospitals more choice and room to avoid relying on one source. They would also make on-site audits easier, allow formulation questions and filing documents to be handled in Japanese, and reduce exposure to disruptions in international shipping.

A finished building is not usable right away. Equipment qualification and process validation come first, and then customers evaluate the media as raw materials. Media from Omura will reach users' manufacturing only some time after the 2030 start.