Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, riding high with a top-selling eye drug and some promising pipeline assets, is planning to invest $150 million in its native New York, supporting 300 new jobs at its fast-growing R&D campus.
The company made its announcement alongside Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who came to Regeneron’s Tarrytown hub for the grand opening of its last major expansion: a pair of buildings housing 300,000 square feet of lab and office space. Regeneron’s latest commitment will fund a 192,000-square-foot addition on the same campus, situated about 25 miles from New York City, bringing a similar mix of labs and offices.
Regeneron is raking in revenue with the blockbuster eye treatment Eylea and, alongside frequent partner Sanofi, wading into the cardiovascular market with the recently approved Praluent. The Big Biotech’s commercial success has bankrolled a sweeping expansion over the past few years, and Regeneron now employs more than 4,000 people around the world with the majority at its 1.1-million-square-foot campus in Tarrytown.
The company’s next big project is dupilumab, now in Phase III development for eczema and asthma, and analysts say it could bring in more than $2.5 billion a year if it can succeed in both. Behind that is sarilumab, another Sanofi-partnered antibody that has successfully treated rheumatoid arthritis in a range of Phase III trials with an FDA filing planned for this year.
And Regeneron sees a bright future for itself in the booming field of immuno-oncology, convincing Sanofi to sign a $1.8 billion deal over the summer to partner up on a handful of early-stage antibodies designed to marshal the body’s natural defenses against cancers.
By Damian Garde
Source: Fierce Biotech
CureVac and the University of Texas’s MD Anderson Cancer Center have announced a co-development and licensing agreement to develop novel messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA)-based cancer vaccines. The strategic collaboration will focus on the development of differentiated cancer vaccine candidates in selected haematological and solid tumour indications with high unmet medical needs.
FUJIFILM Corporation is planning to invest $1.2 billion to expand the planned FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies manufacturing facility in Holly Springs, North Carolina, US. This news follows the organisation’s announcement of a $2 billion investment in the facility in March 2021. This additional financial boost totals the investment to over $3.2 billion, FUJIFILM confirmed.
Sanofi’s global restructuring and downsizing is now fully underway, with layoffs stretching to the company’s Belgian offices. Belgian newspaper De Tijd reports that 67 employees have been laid off at a site in Ghent and 32 jobs are on the chopping block at Sanofi’s Belgium HQ in Diegem.
