Pharmaceuticals

Regeneron expands with $800 million investment

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, a Tarrytown, New York-based biopharmaceutical company, plans to invest approximately $800 million over seven years to expand its laboratory space, manufacturing capacity, and warehouse facilities at the company’s campus in Rensselaer, New York.

New York State, through Empire State Development, an economic development agency, will provide Regeneron incentives worth up to $140 million, including $70 million in Excelsior Job Program tax credits, contingent upon reaching investment and job-creation targets. The investment is slated to add 1,500 new full-time jobs.

“As our number of approved and investigational medicines continues to grow, our need for world-class manufacturing teams and facilities also increases,” said Leonard S. Schleifer, President and Chief Executive Officer of Regeneron, in a September 11, 2018 statement from the Office of the Governor in New York.

Regeneron posted 2017 revenues of $5.87 billion and has six marketed products. Its lead product is Eylea (aflibercept) for treating diabetic macular edema, in a partnership with Bayer, which had net product sales in the US of $3.70 billion. Other products are: Dupixent (dupilumab) for treating moderate-to-severe atopic dermatitis in partnership with Sanofi; Praluent (alirocumab) for treating heterozygous familial hypercholesterolemia, an inherited genetic disorder that causes high cholesterol levels, in partnership with Sanofi; Kevzara (sarilumab), also in partnership with Sanofi, for treating rheumatoid arthritis; Arcalyst (rilonacept) for treating Cryopyrin-Associated Periodic Syndromes, genetically based inflammatory diseases; and Zaltrap (ziv-aflibercept) for treating metastatic colorectal cancer in partnership with Sanofi.

The company, which had 6,200 employees at the end of 2017, has large-scale manufacturing operations in Rensselaer, New York and Limerick, Ireland to produce bulk product for commercial supply of its marketed products and for clinical and preclinical candidates for itself and its collaborations. In 2017, from a growth perspective, the company completed a new lease financing for its laboratory and office facilities in Tarrytown, continued to expand its bulk drug-product manufacturing operations in Rensselaer, and continued build-out and validation activities at its Limerick, Ireland commercial manufacturing facility.

In July 2018, New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo announced a new public–private research collaboration to advance the diagnosis and treatment of tick-borne diseases. Regeneron and the New York State Department of Health Wadsworth Center Laboratory will collaborate to potentially develop improved diagnostics, prophylactics, and therapeutics for the diagnosis and treatment of tick-borne diseases, starting with Lyme disease.

Regeneron and the Wadsworth Center Laboratory will jointly research how the causative agent of Lyme disease, the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi, replicates when a human is bitten by a tick carrying the bacterium, and how the host’s immune response is activated. Over the course of five years, Regeneron will invest up to $48 million in this research and the state will reimburse 50% of Regeneron’s research costs up to a total reimbursement of $24 million through the New York State Life Sciences Initiative, a $620-million initiative to spur the growth of a life-science research cluster in New York. Additionally, up to $6 million will be provided to Wadsworth Center Laboratory through the Life Sciences Initiative.