March 18, 2015
By Riley McDermid, BioSpace.com Breaking News Sr. Editor
Menlo Park, Calif.-based CS Bio Company has completed a massive expansion of its manufacturing facility, and hopes to hire more than 100 by the end of 2017 as it continues growing, a spokesman told BioSpace Wednesday.
“CS Bio had approximately 45 people in 2013, when construction started,” said the source. “Currently [we] have 75 and have an additional 30 open positions that we would like to fill before year end. By end of 2017, we are expecting around 150. All numbers are for only full time employees, excluding part time, consultants etc.”
CS Bio’s new footprint includes a new state-of-the-art 35,000 sq. ft. three-story cGMP manufacturing facility, as well as the renovation of adjacent laboratory and office space in Menlo Park. The new lab is devoted to production of high-quality peptides and includes Class 1,000, 10,000 and 100,000 clean rooms, as well as office and conference spaces.
Scott Porter is a spokesman for the general contractor Level 10 Construction, the company who recently completed construction on a state-of-the-art 35,000 sq. ft. cGMP laboratory project for CS Bio. He said the entire project was built to LEED Gold certification standards and was constructed within a phased 18-month timeline.
“The new building is connected to the adjacent lab facility, with the two buildings separated by a seismic joint,” said Porter. “A two-story atrium is constructed at the front of the new manufacturing facility.
Level 10 Construction also renovated both the exterior and interior of the 11,000 square foot existing lab facility, building out smaller scale labs and chemical storage rooms. Its project manager was Jack Hsueh and the architect is DES Architects + Engineers.
Jason Chang, Vice President of Operations at CS Bio, said Level 10 Construction completed the project on time and on budget, stressed that the new facility meets the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s stringent quality standards for cGMP facilities.
“There were 100 construction people working in a building with clean room classifications,” said Chang. “It took an immense amount of planning to ensure that the clean rooms would be unaffected by construction. It’s not an easy thing to do, but Level 10 Construction planned the project with great skill and precision. The project ran like clockwork.”
BioSpace Temperature Poll
After Amgen Inc. said last week that it will close its South San Francisco facility acquired during its $10 billion buyout of Onyx Pharmaceuticals and will lay off 300 of Oynx’s 750 workers, BioSpace is wondering—will the number of mergers and acquisitions completed in 2014 mean a “streamlining” of biotech jobs in the Bay Area? Tell us your thoughts.
