BeiGene is building a new research and development and manufacturing facility on a 42-acre campus in New Jersey, while MorphoSys is now growing its presence in the greater Boston area.
China-based BeiGene is building a new research and development and manufacturing facility on a 42-acre campus in New Jersey. When operational, the company intends to hire hundreds of people to develop and produce new medicines for different kinds of cancer.
BeiGene will establish its new facility in the town of Hopewell, N.J. at the Princeton West Innovation Campus. The company will build a state-of-the-art facility that includes commercial-stage biologic pharmaceutical manufacturing, clinical research and development, and the BeiGene Center for Pharmacovigilance Innovation.
BeiGene said it selected Hopewell, N.J. due to its proximity to major pharmaceutical and scientific innovation centers within the state, as well as the availability of a deep talent pool in the area. The company said it intends to recruit hundreds of new employees to man the facility. While its new campus will not be ready until sometimes in the middle of 2023, BeiGene said it will rent space within the area and begin to hire new staff immediately.
Michael Garvey, global head of Technical Operations for BeiGene, said the company is making a significant advancement in the United States to expand its current capabilities in oncology. When the Hopewell site is operational, Garvey said it will expand and diversify BeiGene’s global supply chain and manufacturing capabilities.
“We are excited to begin the planned construction of our buildings to house colleagues in a variety of disciplines as well as the manufacturing portion of the campus, which is expected to initially produce biologics and potentially small molecule cancer treatments,” Garvey said in a statement.
The Hopewell site will complement an existing BeiGene facility in Ridgefield Park, N.J., John V. Oyler, co-founder, chairman and chief executive officer of BeiGene said. The Hopewell site, which is near Princeton University, furthers BeiGene’s commitment to translating groundbreaking science into innovative therapies for cancer, Oyler added.
BeiGene isn’t the only company to announce an expansion. Two months after Germany-based MorphoSys announced plans to acquire Cambridge, Mass.-based Constellation Pharmaceuticals, the company is now significantly growing its presence in the greater Boston area.
MorphoSys first established a presence in Boston in 2019 with its first U.S. toehold. Over the past two years, the company has expanded its headcount in the United States. According to the Boston Business Journal, the company is not slowing down. Prior to the acquisition of Constellation, MorphoSys had a headcount of about 150 people in the Boston area. Now, that’s expanded to more than 300 with Constellation’s workforce under its umbrella. CEO Jean-Paul Kress told the Journal that the company does not intend to slow down its U.S. expansion. However, he did not provide the Journal with an idea of how many more employees the company intends to hire.
In an interview with the Journal, Kress said he was excited about the addition of the Constellation staff to his company. The $1.7 billion addition of Constellation bolstered MorphoSys’ position in both hematological cancer as well as solid tumors. The company has two lead products, pelabresib, a BET inhibitor, and CPI-0209, a second-generation EZH2 inhibitor. Both assets are in mid- to late-stage clinical trials and have broad therapeutic potential.
“We’re extremely pleased to add these people and these competencies to our teams at MorphoSys to accomplish our mission of helping patients with devastating diseases, in hematology oncology especially,” Kress told the Journal.
