October 31, 2014
By Jessica Wilson, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk today announced that it is investing $130 million (750 million Danish kroner) in expanding the company’s research and development campus in Måløv, Denmark.
The money is being used to build the Diabetes Research House, which will house approximately 350 people working in several labs. Novo estimates the new laboratory facility will open in early 2016. During the construction, the project will create approximately 1,000 jobs outside the company.
“The new lab facility will provide an environment for cutting-edge diabetes research within biotechnology and protein chemistry,” Mads Krogsgaard Thomsen, executive vice president and chief science officer of Novo Nordisk, was quoted as saying in a statement. “Here our researchers will be working closely together with leading scientists in Denmark and abroad on the discovery and development of new medicines for the treatment of Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes.”
The construction announcement comes in the wake of Novo’s third quarter results, released yesterday, and the forecast that the company’s operating profits would increase by 10 percent in 2015. Novo, which is currently the world’s largest insulin maker, has seen its insulin sales increase about 14 percent a year for the last decade under the leadership of its Chief Executive Officer Lars Rebien Sorensen.
When completed, the Diabetes Research House will have two laboratory wings, a central building with office space and an auditorium seating 450 people. It will be 16,500 square meters in area and three stories tall. Graphics of the Diabetes Research House can be downloaded on novonordisk.com under “Photos.”
The Diabetes House is not Novo’s only expansion initiative. Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. (JEC) announced in late Sept. that Novo had awarded the company a contract for a research and development facility in Bagsvaerd, Denmark. Jacobs said it would provide engineering, procurement and construction management services for a new purification pilot plant project.
This project will expand Novo’s capacity to produce active pharmaceutical ingredients for diabetes drugs in development. The pilot plant is expected to be fully operational by late 2016. Of this project, Jesper Bøving, senior vice president of CMC Supply, part of Novo Nordisk R&D, said, “We expect the new purification pilot plant to significantly increase our capacity for early-phase diabetes projects.”
Novo Nordisk opened its R&D campus in Måløv in 1991 with about 300 employees; now more than 2,300 employees work there. Novo employs 5,000 people in research and development-related activities around the world.
