Several months after its parent company unveiled new labs and office space to unite cell and gene therapy research on the West Coast, Astellas Gene Therapies is turning out the lights at a California production plant.
In a move expected to impact around 100 employees, Astellas Gene Therapies is closing its Eccles biomanufacturing facility in South San Francisco, BioSpace first reported.
While the fate of all 100 employees isn’t immediately clear, an Astellas spokesperson told Fierce Pharma the company is shifting all existing programs and projects at the facility over to Astellas Gene Therapies’ site in Sanford, North Carolina.
That said, at least 17 employees are being let go from the Eccles plant, according to a pair of Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) alerts. The first tranche of layoffs affecting 10 employees took place in June, according to the first notice, while another seven workers from the biomanufacturing plant are set to lose their jobs around Oct. 21, the second notice states.
Astellas Gene Therapies’ manufacturing footprint first took root on Oyster Point in South San Francisco in 2017, the company says on its website. Heading east, Astellas Gene Therapies—which Astellas Pharma formally set up in 2021—completed work on a new $100 million, 135,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in North Carolina in 2022.
As for Astellas Gene Therapies’ soon-to-be-defunct South San Francisco site, the biomanufacturing facility closure is ongoing and expected to wrap up by March 2025, the company’s spokesperson told BioSpace.
“The consolidation of our operations is a planned step aimed at further improvements in our manufacturing capabilities,” the spokesperson said. “We are confident this move will allow us to enhance efficiency and better serve our patients and partners’ needs.”
While Astellas’ gene therapy manufacturing is shifting over to North Carolina, the company is still maintaining advanced medicine research capabilities on the West Coast.
Back in May, Astellas Pharma touted the opening of a new $90 million lab and office facility in South San Francisco. The 154,000-square-foot site is designed to create a “central location” for the Japanese pharma’s West Coast employees across research, technical operations, medical and development and commercial services, which were previously spread out at multiple locations across the Bay Area, Astellas said in a release.
“By bringing together our Bay Area businesses, including Astellas Gene Therapies, Xyphos Biosciences, Business Development, and Rx+ Business Accelerator, we will foster even greater collaboration and productivity, enabling us to advance our efforts in delivering innovative new treatments and value to patients around the world,” Astellas’ chief scientist, Yoshitsugu Shitaka, Ph.D., said in a statement at the time.
The decision to close the Eccles manufacturing site is unrelated to and won't affect any employees at the recently debuted West Coast innovation center, Astellas' spokesperson confirmed.