The second quarter of 2018 brought several expansion announcements from pharmaceutical and biotech companies. Amgen plans to build a $160-million biologics manufacturing plant on its campus in West Greenwich, Rhode Island. The company did not specify which drugs would be produced at the new facility, but said the plant would use portable, smaller and disposable equipment which “provides greater flexibility and speed when manufacturing different medicines simultaneously,” and also eliminates “costly and complex retrofitting inherent in standard facilities.”

Tokyo-based Eisai announced that its US subsidiary will launch the Eisai Center for Genetics Guided Dementia Discovery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in early 2019 with a three-year, $100-million investment. The center will focus on treatments for Alzheimer's disease and other dementias guided by genetics research.

WuXi Biologics announced plans for the construction of a $394-million biologics manufacturing facility in Dundalk, Ireland, which would be the world's largest facility using single-use bioreactors and would create 400 jobs. Additionally, WuXi said it plans to build a $60-million, 150-employee biologics production facility in Worcester, Massachusetts, the company's first in the United States and eleventh overall. WuXi said the facility will be the first US site with continuous bioprocessing capabilities, and will have an early-stage bioprocess development laboratory.

AstraZeneca unveiled its new research facility in South San Francisco, California on May 23. The new location consolidates five of the company's Bay Area sites and will host around 400 employees from its TIDE (Technology Innovation & Delivery Excellence) unit as well as subsidiaries Acerta Pharma, MedImmune, and Pearl Therapeutics. Plans for the facility were announced in 2016, with AstraZeneca saying the location would help the company source talent and partnerships, provide convenient access to suppliers, and also allow it to cut operating costs.

Finally, Alexandria Real Estate Equities announced the expansion of its Alexandria LaunchLabs incubator to Cambridge, Massachusetts. The site has the capacity to house 20 to 40 startups, depending on company size. Alexandria opened its flagship LaunchLabs space in New York City last year.

Advertised biotech and pharmaceutical sector jobs in the job databases tracked by Nature Biotechnology during the second quarter of 2018 are shown in Tables 1 and 2.

Table 1 Who's hiring? Advertised openings at the 25 largest biotech companies
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Table 2 Advertised job openings at the ten largest pharma companies
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