Kyowa Kirin is investing $530 million into a 171,700 square-foot manufacturing facility in Sanford, North Carolina, which will make biologic therapies, including antibodies, for clinical trials and commercial production.
Construction on the company’s first North American site will begin in the second half of this year, and the Japan-based company said it will be fully operational in 2027 and create about 100 new jobs. Kyowa already has manufacturing sites in Takasaki City, Gunma Prefecture and Ube City in Japan.
“The new facility will be scalable with our Takasaki Plant in Japan to help ease technology transfer between the two plants and add production capacity,” Kyowa chief supply chain officer and global manufacturing head Toshiyuki Kurata wrote in a statement. “We believe this will help accelerate drug development and production.”
Kyowa added that the 75-acre site has room for expansion if needed, and that the building of the current facility comes with state and local incentives of $10 million over 12 years.
Kyowa currently has three approved medicines in the US: Poteligeo for relapsed or refractory mycosis fungoides or Sézary syndrome; Nourianz for Parkinson’s disease; and Crysvita, the first drug approved to treat x-linked hypophosphatemia, a rare and inherited form of rickets.
According to Kyowa’s website, it currently has 10 drugs under development for diseases from cancers to atopic dermatitis. The company also recently scored an approval for the gene therapy marketed as Lenmeldy in the US through Orchard Therapeutics, which Kyowa bought in 2023 for $387 million in cash. The drug is the only FDA-approved treatment for children with early-onset metachromatic leukodystrophy.