Agilent Expands Oligonucleotide Manufacturing With New Boulder Lab

Agilent Technologies has added new laboratory space at its Boulder, Colorado facility to bolster its oligonucleotide manufacturing capabilities. The facility is intended to support the development and scale-up of emerging manufacturing technologies for oligonucleotide therapeutics, initially focusing on enzymatic ligation.

Through its Advanced Therapeutics Division, Agilent provides development and current good manufacturing practice (cGMP) manufacturing services for oligonucleotide therapeutics, including siRNA and antisense oligonucleotides. The new Boulder laboratory is set to complement Agilent’s existing oligonucleotide operations in Colorado and its broader manufacturing capabilities in Canada.

“We continue to evaluate manufacturing technologies that can help our customers advance oligonucleotide therapeutics from development toward commercialization,” said Blake Unterreiner, vice president and business unit leader for Agilent’s Advanced Therapeutics Division. “The additional laboratory space gives our teams a dedicated environment to further evaluate customer enzymatic ligation processes and respond to evolving customer manufacturing needs.”

Enzymatic ligation uses enzymes to join shorter oligonucleotide fragments into longer therapeutic molecules. The approach is being evaluated as a complement to solid-phase phosphoramidite synthesis, an established method. Together, these approaches may provide greater flexibility in selecting an appropriate manufacturing process based on a program’s scale and technical requirements. Agilent expects initial customer programs to begin in the Boulder laboratory in November 2026.