AstraZeneca buys Boulder Amgen facility, could bring 400 jobs

BOULDER – London-based pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca PLC (NYSE: AZN) has bought Amgen’s LakeCentre manufacturing facility in Boulder, with AstraZeneca officials stating that the site could eventually employ as many as 400 people.

AstraZeneca made the $14.6 million purchase under the entity MedImmune LLC, according to Boulder County property records. MedImmune is AstraZeneca’s biologics research and development arm.

Despite a collaboration between AstraZeneca and Boulder-based Array BioPharma on cancer drug candidate selumetinib, Array officials issued a statement Friday saying that AstraZeneca’s purchase was not connected to the two companies’ licensing deal.

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Array (Nasdaq: ARRY) invented selumetinib and licensed it in 2003 to AstraZeneca, which is responsible for development and commercialization of the drug. Selumetinib is currently in a Phase 3 clinical trial for treatment of KRAS-mutant advanced non-small cell lung cancer in combination with docetaxel. Selumetinib is also in a Phase 3 study looking at the treatment of thyroid cancer and a Phase 2 registration trial looking at the treatment of neurofibromatosis. The drug is one that Array officials expect to be among the company’s first to commercialization.

“We are pleased with the progress being made in our collaboration with AstraZeneca,” the statement from Array said. “The lung program with selumetinib could potentially lead to ‘blockbuster’ sales. We think Boulder is a great place to do business, but see no connection between our collaboration with AstraZeneca and their decision to acquire a manufacturing facility in Boulder.”

Amgen (Nasdaq: AMGN) announced last year that it was closing its Longmont and Boulder facilities. The massive 70-acre Longmont campus, which includes 692,000 square feet of building space, is on the market for $85 million. The Boulder facility, at 5550 Airport Blvd., sits on 20.4 acres and includes roughly 170,000 square feet of building space, according to property records.

AstraZeneca officials said they plan to start staffing the Boulder facility immediately “to support refurbishment and infrastructure improvements.” It is expected to be operational and licensed for commercial production by late 2017.

“The addition of the Boulder facility will support the progression of biotech drug candidates across our main therapeutic areas as we continue to bring innovative new treatments to patients,” AstraZeneca executive vice president for operations and information technology Pam Cheng said in a prepared statement. “This site will play an important role in our future commercial production and give AstraZeneca and MedImmune … the flexibility and capacity to meet the needs of our rapidly growing biologics portfolio.”