August 25, 2015
By Mark Terry, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
Tarrytown, NY-based Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. announced today that it is expanding at its Landmark at Eastview location, inking a nine-year lease expansion with BioMed Realty Trust Inc.
Regeneron currently leases more than 1.1 million square feet at the location in Tarrytown, and is adding 116,200 additional square feet. The company will move into 78,000 square feet at a location at 767 Old Saw Mill River Road and into 38,200 square feet at a location at 777 Old Saw Mill River Road. Matthew McDevitt, a partner with Transwestern, represented BioMed in the deal.
“We are proud to extend our valued relationship with Regeneron Pharmaceuticals,” said Alan Gold, chairman and chief executive officer of BioMed in a statement. “Transwestern is a highly regarded firm that we’ve had the pleasure of working with on a number of significant biotech transactions along the East Coast, and we are excited to continue working with them to build leasing momentum at The Landmark.”
Regeneron and Paris-based Sanofi have had a major year. On July 24, the two companies announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had approved Praluent (alirocumab) Injection for the treatment of adults with heterozygous familial hypercholesterolemia or clinical atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD), or, in other words, high cholesterol. It is the first FDA-approved treatment in a new class of drugs called proprotein convertase subtilisin/kexin type 9 (PCSK9) inhibitors.
“For patients with high LDL, or bad cholesterol, the primary focus of treatment is to lower their levels, but many patients today do not achieve recommended levels despite lifestyle modifications and treatment with statins,” said Christopher Cannon, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, Cardiovascular Division at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and a member of the Steering Committee for the Phase III ODYSSEY clinical trial program for the drug, in a statement. “In the ODYSSEY clinical trial program, two doses of alirocumab showed significant LDL cholesterol lowering in a variety of patients who were not able to adequately lower their LDL cholesterol with current standard of care alone.”
On July 28 the two companies announced they had signed a global collaboration deal to develop and market cancer treatments using programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) inhibitors. Sanofi paid Regeneron $640 million upfront. Each company will ante up $1 billion for discovery through proof of concept (POC) development of monotherapy and novel combinations of candidates. Regeneron will pay $250 million and Sanofi will pony up $750 million.
Earlier in the year, Regeneron also acquired a nearly 100-acre parcel of undeveloped property adjoining the Landmark at Eastview property. Regeneron acquired the property from Argent Ventures for $73 million.
This marks significant extended growth for Regeneron. In 2014, the company reported a 45 percent increase in revenue with plans to nearly double its employee headcount over the next five years. Much of that revenue spike was related to Eylea, a drug used to treat adult blindness. In addition to the six pipeline products then in development with Sanofi, the company indicated it had another eight antibody products in its clinical development pipeline.
