Astellas Pharma has cut the ribbon on a new life sciences center in Massachusetts that will house 400 team members and an incubator lab.
The Astellas Life Sciences Center includes the drugmaker’s first U.S.-based SakuLab that will be shared with external partners. The labs are inspired by the Japanese word "saku," which means "to bloom," and are designed to be a place where bold and diverse ideas can grow, according to a Sept. 5 release.
The idea behind the Cambridge building is to also foster a statewide innovation network, consisting of incubators, biotech startups and academia, according to Astellas.
In addition, the location will house an engineered small molecules unit focused on targeted protein degradation research, an approach that offers the potential of unlocking "undruggable" targets.
About 400 Astellas employees, spanning medical, business development and research teams, will work in the new building.
"Our new Astellas Life Sciences Center and open innovation SakuLab will advance our efforts to deliver breakthrough therapies and novel modalities, with a focus on areas of high unmet need,” Astellas Chief Medical Officer Tadaaki Taniguchi, M.D., Ph.D., said in the company's release. “It will also strengthen our partnerships with local academic institutions and biotech innovators, underpinning our commitment to pursue transformative treatments in oncology, ophthalmology and rare diseases for patients in need.”
The new center follows the 2020 unveiling of the Astellas Institute of Regenerative Medicine, built to develop regenerative and cell-based medicines, and located in nearby Westborough.
The opening of the life sciences center also comes one day after word broke that the pharma’s gene therapy arm is shuttering a California production plant.
That move is expected to affect around 100 employees, though it’s not immediately clear what that direct impact will be. That said, at least 17 employees are being let go from the biomanufacturing facility, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) alert.
The pharma will be shifting all existing programs and projects from the plant over to the Astellas Gene Therapies’ site in Sanford, North Carolina, a spokesperson told Fierce Pharma. Astellas Gene Therapies—which Astellas Pharma formally launched in 2021—completed work on a new $100 million manufacturing facility in that state in 2022.
“The consolidation of our operations is a planned step aimed at further improvements in our manufacturing capabilities,” an Astellas spokesperson told BioSpace. “We are confident this move will allow us to enhance efficiency and better serve our patients and partners’ needs.”
Back in May, Astellas Pharma debuted a $90 million lab and office facility in South San Francisco. The 154,000-square-foot site is designed to create a “central location” for the Japanese pharma’s West Coast employees across research, technical operations, medical and development and commercial services, which were previously spread out across the Bay Area.
The closure of the California manufacturing site is unrelated and won't affect any employees at the West Coast innovation center, Astellas' spokesperson confirmed.