May 4, 2015
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
WOBURN, Mass. – CONTINUUS Pharmaceuticals, a spin off of a $65 million collaboration between Novartis AG and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), opened a new 3,782-square-foot facility in Woburn to further develop the company’s round-the-clock drugmaking manufacturing process.
The start-up company, which dates back to 2007, manufactures pharmaceutical products for pharmaceutical companies on a round-the-clock basis 365 days per year, hence the play on the continuous On its website CONTINUUS said the traditional batch manufacturing process used by most pharmaceutical and drugmaking companies is an “outdated methodology that suffers from a series of ‘stop-and-start’ steps in its production chain.” The batch process means companies often have a lead time of at least 200 days to manufacture the product from raw material to complete product and each batch must be subjected to quality control testing. The company said this leads to about $50 billion spent by pharmaceutical companies on an “inefficient process.” The process developed by MIT and Novartis changes that traditional model and allows medications to be developed around the clock with tablets being completed within two days. The process also reduces the manufacturing footprint typically needed by pharmaceutical companies, CONTINUUS said.
CONTINUUS moved to Woburn after residing in the pharma hub of the Cambridge Innovation Center in Cambridge, Mass. The move puts the company in a more advantageous location between MIT and the growing hub of the pharmaceutical industry in Cambridge and the surrounding areas, Salvatore Mascia, CONTINUUS’ chief executive officer said in a statement. The new site includes office space, as well as a state-of-the-art chemical laboratory. The company currently employs five, but within three years the company has plans to increase that number to 24, said Julie DeSilva, communications specialist with Cummings Properties, a real estate company that specializes in finding space for start up enterprises. DeSilva said CONINUUS does not have currently have any available positions, but would begin to advertise when they come open.
The town of Woburn is a BioReady community at the platinum level, the highest rating given by Mass Biotechnology Council, the company said in a statement. This designation recognizes the City’s adoption of local policies that ease the pathway for renovation or new construction of biotech laboratory and manufacturing facilities.
Before becoming CEO of CONTINUUS, Mascia was the former Strategic Project Manager at the Novartis-MIT Center for Continuous Manufacturing, where he led the integration of the first end-to-end continuous manufacturing process for pharmaceuticals.
In January CONTINUUS Pharmaceuticals was awarded a Phase I SBIR grant from the National Science Foundation to further develop its integrated continuous manufacturing technology. This Phase I SBIR grant consists of $150,000 over a six-month period, the company said. The grant abstract said the development process has the potential to produce better quality drugs, greatly reduce the risk of drug shortages, and allow pharmaceutical companies to manufacture and distribute drugs in a more cost-effective and efficient manner.
The Boston area has become a major pharmaceutical center in large part due to academic institutions like MIT and other research universities. The region is experiencing a pharmaceutical boom as more companies, such as IBM’s new Watson Health Unit, locate their headquarters and satellite offices to the area. In addition to start up companies like CONTINUUS, many larger and established pharmaceutical companies, such as Pfizer Inc. , GlaxoSmithKline , Takeda Pharmaceuticals , Sanofi , Biogen Idec, Inc. and Novartis have presences in the city. The close proximity of so many pharmaceutical and university laboratories provides researchers and scientists easy access to clinical studies and building partnerships between companies.
According to the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, which makes its home in Cambridge, Mass., the heart of the state’s biotech industry, the biotech and pharmaceutical presence in the state grew by 41 percent between 2004 and 2013. Across the state the industry employed 57,642 in 2013, the most recent year with complete data.
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