September 11, 2015
By Mark Terry, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
UK-based AstraZeneca PLC announced today that it was buying a manufacturing facility located in Boulder, Colo. from Amgen The company will begin staffing immediately and could hire up to 400 skilled jobs over the long-term.
The plant, known as the LakeCentre facility, is expected to eventually double AstraZeneca’s manufacturing capacity in the U.S.
“The addition of the Boulder facility will support the progression of biotech drug candidates across our main therapeutic areas as we continue to bring innovative new treatments to patients,” said Pam Cheng, executive vice president of operations and information technology at AstraZeneca in a statement. “This site will play an important role in our future commercial production and give AstraZeneca and MedImmune , our global biologics research and development arm, the flexibility and capacity to meet the needs of our rapidly growing biologics portfolio.”
This marks a trend in AstraZeneca expanding its manufacturing capacity worldwide. On May 18, AstraZeneca invested $285 million in a new manufacturing facility in Södertälje, Sweden. That plant will be used for filling and packaging of protein therapeutics. It is expected to be fully operational by 2019. AstraZeneca already has a manufacturing facility in the same area, the company’s largest global tablets and capsules plant. It is also launching a platform site there that will have specialists who work closely with research and development on large-scale production of new medicines. That investment will create 150 to 250 new jobs by 2019.
About a year ago, in November 2014, AstraZeneca announced it was expanding its manufacturing facility in Frederick, Md. The company is investing more than $200 million to increase production capacity at the site, which is an FDA licensed, large-scale cell culture production facility. It is expected to be completed in mid-2017 and will bring in a total of 300 new jobs.
Most recently, in August, the company announced a licensing deal with Heptares Therapeutics, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sosei Group Corporation, for global rights to HTL-1071 for a number of oncology applications. HTL-1081 is an adenosine A2A receptor antagonist. Adenosine is produced by tumor cells and stimulates A2A receptors, which inhibit immune cells from growing. HTL-1071 potentially blocks this activity, which would then free up the immune system to fight cancer cells.
That was only part of what appears to be a booming sign of growth in AstraZeneca’s oncology pipeline. In June the company announced other advances at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) in Chicago. It indicated that by 2020 it expected half of its new drugs would be tied into genetic testing to better identify the best treatments for cancer patients.
The update included data on MEDI4736, an anti-PD-L1 monoclonal antibody in patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), as well as the same drug in combination with tremelimumab. Nine immuno-oncology clinical trials are planned or already started in NSCLC across early and advanced stages of the disease as well as in various other cancer types, including squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck (SCCHN), and gastric, pancreatic and bladder cancer. It also has three OX40 molecules in solid and hematological cancers that are being studied alone or in combination with other drugs.
“At AstraZeneca,” said chief executive Pascal Soriot in a statement in June, “we have been clear in our belief that combinations hold the key to transforming clinical practice for the patients not benefiting from the currently-available immunotherapies. ...With our longstanding expertise in developing highly effective small molecule medicines, including Lynparza and AZD9291, we are now also seeing the potential of combining these targeted medicines with immuno-oncology molecules to deliver efficacious and durable treatment to patients.”
And clearly the company is expanding its manufacturing capabilities to prepare for it.
