Being committed to continued advances in improving human health, SCHOTT has opened a new facility last month in Phoenix to expand the development and manufacturing of diagnostics and life science consumables.
“SCHOTT saw an opportunity to leverage our expertise and the existing production capabilities here in Phoenix to bring manufacturing for this market to the U.S. for the first time,” says Greg Wolters, head of Strategic Business Field Diagnostics at SCHOTT. “The Phoenix area is a very welcoming environment for business with excellent talent and we plan to hire 150 people in the coming years. The investment we’ve made helps SCHOTT to onshore critical manufacturing supporting the U.S. Government’s renewed interest in reshoring and revitalizing American manufacturing to secure critical domestic supply chains.”
Launching the first fully integrated microfluidic foundry in the United States validates SCHOTT’s global growth plan and increases production capabilities to help get these products to market faster and more efficiently. The new, almost 40,000-square-foot facility is comprised of clean room, high-volume manufacturing of microarrays and microfluidic devices.
Diagnostic tests for infectious disease, autoimmune disease and cancers are increasingly being performed at the Point of Care (PoC) rather than central laboratories. Demand especially took off during the COVID-19 pandemic. These tests, in various microfluidic cartridges with embedded biosensors, detect and quantify multiple biomarkers related to the genes and proteins of the infecting agent or present in the patient.
The new field of Precision Medicine enables the precise diagnosis and better treatment outcomes of disease, considering the patient’s individual genetic makeup, environment, and lifestyle. Enabling companies producing leading edge life science research tools, and advanced diagnostics which probe the details of genomic and proteomic signatures associated with disease, has become a major strategic focus area for SCHOTT.
SCHOTT MINIFAB, a diagnostics business of SCHOTT North America, Inc., offers a complete set of solutions for contract design and manufacturing of rapid diagnostics devices to enable precise treatments and therapies.
