Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals, Inc. announced that it has completed a transaction to purchase 13 acres of land in the Verona Technology Park in Verona, WI, which is planned to be the site of an approximately 140,000 square foot drug manufacturing facility and an approximately 115,000 square foot laboratory and office facility to support process development and analytical activities. Arrowhead intends to invest between $200 million and $250 million into the buildout of the facilities. The Company expects that the new facilities will result in the creation of approximately 250 new jobs in the local area. Construction is scheduled to begin in the first quarter of 2022. Arrowhead will continue to operate additional research and development facilities in Madison, WI, and San Diego, CA.
“For more than a decade, Arrowhead has been a dedicated member of the biotech community in the greater Madison, Wisconsin, area. We have built strong local relationships and are pleased to continue our growth with the new Arrowhead campus that will include a new GMP manufacturing facility and associated lab and office facility. This investment reaffirms our commitment to the Wisconsin biotech ecosystem, and we would like to thank the local agencies, who have been a pleasure to work with. Arrowhead’s pipeline of what we believe are industry leading investigational RNAi medicines continues to expand rapidly. The new Arrowhead campus will allow us to support our growing pipeline and positions us well to advance the manufacturing process, including at commercial scale, of our TRiM™-enabled drug candidates. We view this as a strong competitive advantage as we approach potential commercialization of our rapidly progressing clinical candidates.”
Christopher Anzalone, Ph.D., Arrowhead’s president and CEO
Major project team members include Eppstein Uhen Architects, DPS Group, D’Onofrio Kottke & Associates, Smocke & Associates, Cresa Madison, and Vogel Brothers Building Company.
John Chapman, Vice President and Design Principal at EUA, said, “We are privileged to be collaborating again with Arrowhead on an inventive building design which will enable their employees to treat some of the most challenging diseases.”
Completion of the lab and office space is anticipated in the first quarter of 2023 and completion of the manufacturing facility is expected in the fourth quarter of 2023.
About Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals
Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals develops medicines that treat intractable diseases by silencing the genes that cause them. Using a broad portfolio of RNA chemistries and efficient modes of delivery, Arrowhead therapies trigger the RNA interference mechanism to induce rapid, deep, and durable knockdown of target genes. RNA interference, or RNAi, is a mechanism present in living cells that inhibits the expression of a specific gene, thereby affecting the production of a specific protein. Arrowhead’s RNAi-based therapeutics leverage this natural pathway of gene silencing.