Area Development
Ipsen has announced it will relocate its U.S. headquarters from Brisbane, CA, to Bridgewater, NJ, by April 2012 and eventually hire over 100 employees at the new location. The company also announced it will make a $45 million investment next year in its 77,000-sq.-ft. Milford, Massachusetts, R&D and technical operations facility.

Ipsen is moving its California headquarters to a leased New Jersey facility encompassing over 30,000 square feet. The operations will provide specialty-care expertise to underserved neurological and endocrine disease communities.

Sean McKercher, president and general manager of Ipsen North America, said this move was a "natural choice" for Ipsen given New Jersey's ready access to international travel hubs, its deep pool of pharma talent, and its business incentives for the biopharma sector. He said the state "reflects our commitment to champion medicines for patients with severely debilitating diseases in need of therapeutic options."

The Milford project will create a new three-story, 62,000-sq.-ft. building (to be completed by early 2014) and renovate one of the site's two existing buildings. Presently the facility is a center for Ipsen's U.S.-based peptide and toxin R&D platforms, and a manufacturing plant focused on the production of recombinant proteins for the treatment of hemophilia.

Company executive Cynthia Sylvestre explained that the Milford facility is at the cutting edge of "innovative, impactful and high-performing" R&D and manufacturing capabilities focused on delivering new treatments for serious and life-threatening diseases to patients. "We are confident that investing $45 million in this unique site, in such close proximity to the impressive concentration of scientific skills and talent in Massachusetts, will enable Ipsen to expand its bio-therapeutic technological platforms and pipeline," she said.