June 23, 2016
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
MARLBOROUGH, Mass. – After a two-year wait, GE Healthcare opened a new 210,000 square-foot drug development facility in Massachusetts that the company says will employ more than 500 people when the precision medicine facility is operating at full capacity in 2017.
The site is home to 40,000 square feet of laboratories supporting cell and immune therapy research and development, early stage drug development, biomanufacturing, GE said in a statement announcing the grand opening of the facility. The laboratories will house GE’s ninth global Fast Trak facility, which partners with and trains biotech innovators to discover new drugs, develop manufacturing workflows, and optimize their biomanufacturing processes. In 2017, the site will also include GE’s FlexFactory manufacturing platform, originally designed in Marlborough, MA, and which pioneered end-to-end, flexible, small batch biologic drug manufacturing.
GE has already posted a number of open positions on its career portal, including multiple engineering and scientist positions.
The new facility is part of the company’s shift of its presence from Chicago to the greater Boston area, which has been ongoing since 2014. GE Healthcare will move into the renovated $21 milling facility in Marlborough, Mass. to capitalize on the increasing growth of biotech and pharma companies in the Boston area.
“Two years ago, we began to move our east coast North American operations to the Boston area to better coordinate our focus on patients, clinicians and customers’ needs,” Kieran Murphy, president and chief executive officer of GE Healthcare’s Life Sciences business, said in a statement. “Having our North American headquarters in the heart of Massachusetts’ rich ecosystem of healthcare, pharma, and biotech brings us closer to key customers, outstanding talent and ground-breaking innovation and is already helping fuel further growth for our business.”
GE Life Sciences is a division of GE Healthcare focuses on drug development as well as diagnostic and imaging equipment and healthcare IT products. In August, GE Healthcare received clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for a low dose computed tomography (CT) lung cancer screening option. Additionally, Medicare has approved insurance reimbursement for its beneficiaries who are eligible for the use of low dose CT lung cancer screening in high-risk patients, the company said. GE Healthcare’s low-dose screening protocols are tailored to the CT system, patient size, and the most current recommendations from a wide range of professional medical and governmental organizations.
GE Life Sciences division has a focus on cell therapies, including ways to collect and transport cells in ways to help develop personalized medicine. GE Life Sciences also helps biotech companies figure out how to mass manufacture therapies for either clinical trials or commercialization, the Boston Business Journal said.
In addition to the new Marlborough site, GE Healthcare operates a Westborough, Mass. production facility that it plans to continue to produce single-use products and consumables for biopharmaceutical manufacturing.
When GE completes its move to the Boston area by the end of 2016, the company said it will have nearly 5,000 employees across Massachusetts.
Mass. Gov. Charlie Baker touted the move as an additional sign of the strength of the state as a leader in the life sciences industry.
While the company has been focused on its move from Chicago to the Boston area, GE Healthcare recently announced it was spending more than $1 billion over the next five years for the development of its educational offerings to reach more than two million healthcare professionals worldwide.
