Astellas Pharma has announced plans to build an integrated biotech facility at 480 Forbes Boulevard, South San Francisco. The new 154,000-square-foot facility will function as a West Coast center for Astella Pharma to focus on research, innovation and commercial operations across program and corporate areas.
Astellas will be the only occupant of the new facility and expects the building will be finished and operational by the summer of 2023.
This is advantageous for Astellas Pharma as the new facility will bring together several of the company’s business units and functions that are currently located independently across the San Francisco area, including the West Coast employees of Astellas Gene Therapies, Xyphos Biosciences and Rx+ Business Accelerator.
“By uniting our business units in the Bay Area, we are creating a dedicated West Coast center in the vibrant South San Francisco corridor alongside other leaders in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry,” said Yoshitsugu Shitaka, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer at Astellas in the company’s press release.
Astellas will invest around $70 million to build the new biotech facility, which will have state-of-the-art research laboratories and co-working spaces. It will include employees in research, medical and development, technical operations, commercial and administrative support roles. The new facility is needed to support the company develop ground-breaking cell and gene therapies for rare diseases, cancer and other diseases for patients who currently have limited or no treatment options.
“Similar to the Astellas Biomedical Innovation Hub located in the greater Boston area, this new facility will foster even greater levels of collaboration amongst our world-class, multi-disciplinary teams working in cell and gene therapies, development of business opportunities and all those who support our endeavors to create value for patients,” added Shitaka.
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Astellas Pharma has recently opened another location in the US. Three weeks ago, Astellas celebrated the opening of their new 135,000 square-foot gene therapy manufacturing facility located at 6074 Enterprise Park Drive in Sanford, North Carolina. The Sanford facility will aid with the clinical- and commercial-scale manufacturing of Astellas Pharma’s adeno-associated virus (AAV) vectors for gene therapies. Astellas invested $100 million in the Sanford facility, and it will help create over 200 jobs through 2026.
Astellas Pharma US is headquartered in Northbrook, Illinois, and the company has other US locations in San Francisco, San Diego, Menlo Park (California), Cambridge, Seattle, Westborough (Massachusetts) and Washington, DC.
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