Aprecia Pharmaceuticals to Fill Vacant Building With 150 Jobs, $25 Million Investment

Aprecia Pharmaceuticals to Fill Vacant Building With 150 Jobs, $25 Million Investment
February 24, 2015
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff

LANGHORNE, Penn. – Aprecia Pharmaceutical Co. will expand its manufacturing operations to Ohio by investing $25 million into a 190,000 square-foot facility, which will include the 150 new positions.

Aprecia Pharmaceuticals, known for its use of 3-D printing in the creation of high dose medications, received a 55 percent, $1.55 million eight-year job creation tax credit from the Ohio Tax Credit Authority for the Blue Ash location. The new positions at the Ohio site will have an average annual salary of $90,000, according to reports.

“The facility has ample space to accommodate our proprietary manufacturing machines and equipment assemblies in the capacity necessary to achieve our projected commercial production volumes well into the future,” Don Wetherhold, Aprecia’s Chief Executive Officer, said in a news release.

Wetherhold said Aprecia will begin adapting the Blue Ash site within the next few months.

In December the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) accepted Aprecia’s New Drug Application for the first product using its ZipDose technology, a formulation platform that enables medicine to disperse in a patient’s mouth with a sip liquid. ZipDose products are expected to enable people to take medications with greater ease and allow stronger doses to be administered orally in a pill form. Patient-related factors such as age, personal habits or insufficient knowledge about medications may contribute to swallowing difficulties and the company is banking on its proprietary ZipDose technology to overcome those issues.

“This is the first in a line of products in the CNS therapeutic area that Aprecia plans to introduce over the next several years as part of our commitment to transform and improve the experience of taking potentially lifesaving medications,” Wetherhold said in a press release.

Aprecia built its ZipDose platform using 3-D printing technology that originated at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, The technology allows the company to produce fast-melt formulations of medicines that exceed the disintegration speed and dose-load capacity of products made by other fast-melt technologies, the company said in an announcement.

In addition to the ZipDose platform, Aprecia’s other products include CustomRelease, which provides time-release options for drug delivery; NanoDose, designed for products requiring submilligram doses and ImplantaDose, which is used for management of infections and pain following surgery.

Aprecia currently has operations in Langhorne, about 25 miles outside of Philadelphia, as well as a manufacturing facility in East Windsor, N.J.



BioSpace Temperature Poll
Analyst Mark Schoenebaum, a biotech and pharmaceuticals analyst and medical doctor for ISI Group Evercore, has been running a Best Hair in Biopharma contest for several months now. So far, the candidates are Bristol-Myers Squibb Company's John Elicker, ReceptosChief Executive Officer Faheem Hasnain, Celgene's Vice President of Investor Relations Patrick Flanigan and Acorda Therapeutics' Ron Cohen.

We want to know what our BioSpace community thinks: Who do you believe actually has the Best Hair in BioPharma?

Read at BioSpace.com

Back to news