Pfizer Expanding Gene Therapy With Purchase Of Durham Site

Pfizer (NYSE: PFE), the international biopharmaceutical giant, is expanding its gene therapy program with the purchase of a Durham property that will become a clinical manufacturing facility.

Pfizer bought the 60,000-square-foot building and 16-acre site at 1219 Shiloh Glen Drive for $10.3 million in September. The company will renovate the building into what it calls an Advanced Therapy Medicinal Product facility. It plans a total investment of $19 million, including the purchase price.

Pfizer said the building will be retrofitted to provide facilities for making drug components and related products, and for testing labs. It is near the intersection of I-40 and I-540 in Research Triangle Park.

It will double the manufacturing capacity of the former Bamboo Therapeutics site it will vacate when that lease expires in Chapel Hill, providing space for 120 employees in the Durham building. Renovations are to begin in 2020 and the opening is planned for 2022.

The news follows Pfizer’s recent announcement that it would invest $500 million and add some 300 jobs to expand upon its newly opened $100 million gene therapy manufacturing addition at its sprawling pharmaceutical manufacturing campus in Sanford.

Pfizer currently employs about 3,600 people in North Carolina at sites in Chapel Hill, Sanford and Morrisville.