Area Development
Sanofi-Aventis, one of the world's biggest pharmaceutical companies, is investing $65 million to expand its Cambridge, Massachusetts facility, and will hire 300 additional employees, the Boston Globe reports. The company, which is located in Paris, France, will set up its cancer division's new joint headquarters.

"We believe that Cambridge is really the heart of oncology today,'' Hanspeter Spek, president of Sanofi-Aventis global operations, said in a company conference call this year. "We intend to benefit from this environment as a neighbor.''

Massachusetts is banking on the pharmaceutical industry to buoy the state's economy. Two years ago Governor Deval Patrick began a $1 billion, 10-year plan to offer tax incentives to life sciences companies. Last year, 26 companies received a total of $24.5 million.

Sanofi-Aventis has applied for $2.45 million in state tax credits from the Life Sciences Center, and will ask for another $6.5 million over the next four years.

Several other foreign pharmaceutical companies have facilities around Boston, such as Novartis, Merck, GlaxoSmithKline, and AstraZeneca.