Washington’s most-successful biotech company, MedImmune, will break ground today on a $250 million manufacturing plant in Frederick. The expansion, which will increase the Gaithersburg-based firm’s capacity to produce a number of therapeutics, is the next step in the evolution of the Washington region’s maturing biotech industry, officials said.
MedImmune’s expansion “is important. All of this is evolutionary,” said Aris Melissaratos, Maryland’s secretary of business and economic development. “For every drug in the pipeline, you want to get [to the manufacturing stage].”
MedImmune pulled in $1.2 billion in revenues last year, much of that from the sale of its flagship product, Synagis, a preventative drug for infants with a high-risk of respiratory disease.
In addition to increased capacity for Synagis, the Frederick Manufacturing Center expansion will give MedImmune more room to develop and produce flu vaccines. MedImmune won a $170 million contract in the spring to develop flu vaccines for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, part of a federal strategy to prepare for a potential flu pandemic.
The expansion will be done in four phases and will nearly double the number of MedImmune employees by 2008. The company employs more than 1,100 and will add 840 new jobs.
While the Washington area is well known for its biotechnology research and development, only a handful of companies have serious manufacturing capabilities. For example, Eli Lilly and Co., one the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, is building a $425 million manufacturing facility in Prince William County that will add 700 employees by 2007.
MedImmune chose to build its manufacturing facilities in Maryland despite cheaper options out of state because of the company’s existing infrastructure and a strong talent pool in the region, said Kate Barrett, a spokeswoman for MedImmune.
“It’s a natural place for us to expand,” she said.
“We have the existing facility and an educated work force, so it made sense.”
But many of the area’s startups that gain Food and Drug Administration approval for a drug form partnerships with large pharmaceutical companies to manufacture their products. The goal is to keep startups like MedImmune in state in order to create more jobs and pump dollars into the local economy.
“A MedImmune kind of company is few and far between,” Melissaratos said. “They are the poster child. They had a classic growth strategy. They started here, built a research facility here and expanded here. If we could get four or five more like them we would be on top of the world.”
