Agilent Technologies has picked northern Colorado to build an API plant and add up to 200 jobs.
The life sciences company said this week that it has bought 20 acres in Weld County, CO, and will build a new facility to manufacture nucleic acid active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). When complete, the facility is expected to have 150 to 200 workers. Agilent received some incentives to put the new plant in Frederick, CO, a state official said.
The company offered no details on the project but said when it is complete, it will more than double Agilent’s commercial manufacturing capacity for nucleic acid APIs. The company already has the capacity to produce clinical through commercial quantities of oligo APIs at a facility in Boulder about 30 miles away from Frederick. A plant expansion completed at the Boulder facility in 2010 allowed for commercial production.
Oligonucleotides are being used by companies like AstraZeneca ($AZN), Biomarin ($BMRN) and others to develop treatments for cancer, diabetes and other conditions. Antisense oligonucleotides are short, single strands of DNA or RNA molecules, but instead of modulating the activity of already-formed proteins, antisense oligonucleotides act before proteins are produced at the level of messenger RNA in the cell and so offer new opportunities for therapeutic intervention.
- here’s the release
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