Dive brief:
- Japanese pharmaceutical company Kyowa Kirin plans to invest up to $530 million to build a new biologic therapy manufacturing facility in Sanford, North Carolina.
- The plant is located on a 75-acre campus in the Research Triangle Park region, with room for future expansion to meet capacity needs, according to a Company press release of June 10.
- The 171,700-square-foot facility, equipped with two reactors used for drug production, will break ground later this year and be fully operational by 2027. The plant will create more than 100 new jobs.
Diving knowledge:
Kyowa Kirin is a biotechnology and drug manufacturing company specializing in antibody technologies in core therapeutic areas such as oncology treatments for the central nervous system.
The Sanford facility is part of a larger effort to build Kyowa Kirin’s global manufacturing network, which includes sites in Takasaki and Ube, Japan.
“The new facility will be scalable with our Takasaki plant in Japan to help facilitate technology transfer between the two plants and increase production capacity. We believe this will help accelerate drug development and production,” said Toshiyuki Kurata, director of global manufacturing and supply chain. towards Kyowa Kirin.
Kyowa Kirin is new The facility aims to accelerate the production of biological therapies for rare and serious diseases, including antibodies for the company’s planned clinical trials and future commercial use, according to the statement.
The manufacturing investment will be supported by $10 million in state and local performance-based incentives over 12 years, the release said.
Kyowa Kirin has been growing its American presence since 2018, which accounted for more than a quarter Kyowa Kirin’s global revenue by 2022, according to a company press release. The pharmaceutical company established its headquarters in North America in New Jersey in July 2023 and has a research center in La Jolla, California.
The pharmaceutical company aims to benefit from the biomanufacturing network established in Research Triangle Park, one of the largest designated research parks in the country.
Fujifilm’s contract drug maker Diosynth Biotechnologies it has a campus of 119 acres in the park and manufacturer of glass syringes Schott Pharma is building a facility for use in GLP-1 therapies, will begin production in 2027. In February, National Resilience announced that it is expanding its filling and finishing operations at its Durham site amid a company-wide effort to increase its drug manufacturing capacity.
