Touchlight Wins ISPE Facility of the Year Award for Innovation, Recognised for Revolutionary dbDNA™ Manufacturing at Morelands Facility

London, UK, 12 May, 2025 – Touchlight, a pioneering leader in synthetic DNA technology, is proud to announce that its Morelands Facility has been named the 2025 Innovation Winner in the prestigious International Society for Pharmaceutical Engineering (ISPE) Facility of the Year Awards (FOYA). This distinguished recognition highlights Touchlight’s groundbreaking approach to DNA manufacturing and underscores its commitment to innovation, sustainability, and operational excellence.

Touchlight’s Morelands facility, located in an historic Victorian waterworks in Hampton, London, has been transformed into a world-class production hub for synthetic DNA technology, specifically the company’s proprietary dbDNA™. This revolutionary platform addresses key challenges in traditional plasmid DNA (pDNA) manufacturing, eliminating fermentation processes and antibiotic resistance sequences while achieving greater purity and sequence flexibility. The facility’s expansion has tripled production capacity, making it one of the largest DNA manufacturing sites globally.

“At Touchlight, we are redefining DNA manufacturing to support the next generation of genetic medicines,” said Karen Fallen, CEO at Touchlight. “Winning the 2025 ISPE Facility of the Year Award in the Innovation category is a testament to our commitment to pioneering advancements in DNA synthesis. Our Morelands facility exemplifies our dedication to innovation, flexibility, and sustainability, ensuring we can meet the growing global demand for high-purity DNA while maintaining the highest standards of safety and operational excellence.”

A Facility Built for Innovation

The dbDNA™ platform utilises enzymatic rolling circle amplification (RCA) to rapidly synthesise large quantities of highly pure DNA, supporting the development of genetic medicines, including mRNA vaccines, viral vectors, and gene therapies. The Morelands facility was designed with flexibility and scalability in mind, enabling simultaneous manufacturing of multiple products while maintaining GMP standards.

Touchlight’s commitment to digital transformation has been a key driver of its success. The company implemented SAP S/4HANA Cloud to enhance operational efficiency, improve traceability, and support future expansion. This initiative earned Touchlight the Business Innovator Award in the SAP UKI Customer Success Awards 2024.

Additionally, Touchlight is focused upon prioritising sustainability, integrating green manufacturing techniques that reduce water and energy consumption. The facility utilises renewable energy and maintains an exemplary safety record with zero reportable incidents over a 24-month period.

As an ISPE FOYA Category Winner, Touchlight now looks forward to the announcement of the overall Facility of the Year winner in October at the ISPE Annual Meeting & Expo in the United States.

“We are incredibly honoured to receive the ISPE Facility of the Year Award for Innovation,” said Jonny Ohlson, Executive Chair and Founder of Touchlight. “This recognition reflects the hard work and ingenuity of our team, who have pushed the boundaries of DNA manufacturing to accelerate the development of genetic medicines. The Morelands facility is a testament to our commitment to innovation, operational excellence, and sustainability in biopharmaceutical production.”

Recognising the 2025 ISPE FOYA Winners

In addition to Touchlight’s remarkable achievement, several leading pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies have been recognised for their outstanding contributions to the industry in this year’s ISPE Facility of the Year Awards (FOYA). Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine received two accolades: the Operational Excellence award for its advanced automated packaging line and the Project Execution award for its expanded biomanufacturing capabilities. CSL Behring was honoured with the Pharma 4.0™ award for its groundbreaking work in scaling up plasma fractionation capacity.

Bayer Healthcare LLC was acknowledged for its impact in addressing unmet medical needs through its innovative cell therapy initiatives, while Sanofi earned the Sustainability Excellence award for its cutting-edge wastewater treatment and reuse plant. Additionally, Erbe Elektromedizin GmbH and United Therapeutics received honourable mentions for their pioneering efforts in medical technology and xenotransplantation, respectively. These remarkable projects, alongside Touchlight’s pioneering work, underscore the industry’s commitment to innovation, sustainability, and advancing global healthcare.

For more information about Touchlight and its cutting-edge contributions to genetic medicine, visit http://www.touchlight.com. To learn more about the ISPE Facility of the Year Awards and see the full list of winners, visit https://ispe.org/facility-year-awards.

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About Touchlight

Touchlight is a privately-owned CDMO based in London, U.K., focused on the provision of DNA services and manufacture of enzymatically produced doggybone DNA (dbDNA™) to enable the development of genetic medicines. Touchlight provide rapid, enzymatic DNA development and manufacturing for all advanced therapy production, including mRNA, viral and non-viral gene therapy and DNA API. dbDNA is a minimal, linear, covalently closed structure, which eliminates bacterial sequences. Touchlight’s revolutionary enzymatic production platform enables unprecedented speed, scale, and the ability to target genes with a size and complexity that is impossible with current technologies. Clients can be supported from pre-clinical through development and supply, to licencing and tech transfer for use in-house.

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