Massachusetts-Based Radius Health Opens Up Shop in Philadelphia with Plans to Hire 100+ Employees
June 22, 2016
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
WALTHAM, Mass. – Radius Health , which is developing therapies for patients with osteoporosis and other serious diseases, opened a 14,000 square-foot site in Pennsylvania and employ 100 there, the Philadelphia Business Journal reported this morning.
The new site will be the home of Radius Health’s pharmacovigilance and medical affairs teams. The expansion into Pennsylvania comes as the company is preparing to launch its first commercial product, the Journal said. In May, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration accepted Radius Health’s New Drug Application for abaloparatide-sc, an investigational synthetic peptide for the potential treatment of postmenopausal women with osteoporosis. Last year Radius submitted a Centralized Marketing Authorization Application for abaloparatide-SC in the European Union. The company said it anticipates a regulatory ruling in Europe later this year. Radius delayed filing its NDA with the FDA until March of this year, instead of at the same time as the CMA in the EU. The company said rushing the NDA had a potential to create unnecessary risk.
“Part of our assessment was—is this the time to ask everyone in our supply chain to work on an accelerated basis over a period of time when they all had personal plans? Or was it better for us to pick a timeline that was more respectful for what the overall work-life balance might be across our whole supply chain,” Robert Ward, Radius’ president and chief executive officer told Bloomberg at the time.
The Wayne, Penn. site was chosen so Radius could “leverage the region’s vibrant life sciences community and workforce,” Ward told the Journal.
Wayne, Penn. is home to a number of pharma and biotech companies, including Shire ’s small molecule and enzyme facility, gene therapy company Medgenics, Teleflex Medical, FemmePharma and the infectious disease diagnostics company Molecular Detection, Inc. Christopher Molineaux, president of Pennsylvania Bio, told the Journal that Radius’ decision to expand into Pennsylvania is a testament to the strength of that state’s growing importance as a pharma and biotech hub.
Radius has listed multiple positions on its website for its Waltham, Mass. location, as well as its Pennsylvania site. Open positions in Pennsylvania include Pricing and contracting manager and a market access manager.
Expansion has been part of Radius’ plan for some time. Last year the company told BioSpace Radius is in “high growth mode” and expected the company to double in size. During the previous year, Radius grew its employee base from 25 employees to 73. And they’re not done. Ward told the Journal he anticipates Radius will continue to grow this year to about 300 employees in order to be ready for commercial approval of abaloparatide-SC.