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MassDevelopment In The News
MassDevelopment, MBI Help Land Manufacturing Jobs in Shrewsbury
January 12, 2007: Mass High Tech, by Ryan McBride
A New Jersey medical technology startup has begun construction to refurbish a research and manufacturing facility in Shrewsbury, aiming to eventually house up to 200 employees and initial production of its insulin-delivery system there - a win for central Massachusetts and the medical device industry, which has been working to establish more manufacturing in the region.
The company, Valeritas LLC, has a presence in Massachusetts only through its corporate parent, BioValve Technologies Inc., based in Westborough. Employees there will share space in the Shrewsbury facility.
Valeritas is renovating 46,000 square feet of leased manufacturing laboratory and office space within an existing building off Route 9, said Valeritas CEO Robert Gonnelli. Plans call for the facility to be fully operational by June, in advance of the commercial launch of the company’s h-Patch insulin-delivery system, which is scheduled some time in the second half of this year.
Industry officials are calling the company’s plans a major success for the life-science sector in the state, which has lobbied hard to entice firms such as Valeritas to create new jobs and launch manufacturing operations here.
"Obviously, (Valeritas) coming to Massachusetts to begin manufacturing its insulin product has turned a lot of heads," said Kevin O’Sullivan, president and CEO of Massachusetts Biomedical Initiatives, or MBI, an industry organization in Worcester that helps launch life sciences companies.
Life sciences companies often look to establish R&D operations in the state, making manufacturing jobs more difficult to come by, be added.
While Gonnelli wouldn’t quantify the company’s total investment in the endeavor, the project is a clear sign that Parsippany, NJ-based Valeritas is poised to enter the multibillion-dollar insulin market, fueled by growing numbers of diabetics and demand for more convenient means of delivering insulin into the body.
The Shrewsbury facility had been the headquarters of TranXenoGen Inc. until the financially troubled biotechnology firm sold the 80,000-square foot building to an affiliate of Boston real estate firm VinCo Properties Inc. early last year.
Plans by Valeritas include eventually employing between 150 to 200 workers there, according to officials involved in attracting Valeritas for the Shrewsbury site, which included O’Sullivan’s MBI. Gonnelli did not return phone calls to confirm the employment figures.
Meantime, the Bay State’s finance and development agency, MassDevelopment, confirmed plans to grant the company a low-interest loan from the Emerging Technology Fund for the project. MassDevelopment would not release further details about the deal before the scheduled closing of the loan later this month, said spokesman Adam Bickelman.
Though Valeritas is based in the Garden State, the company was founded in August as a subsidiary of Westborough’s BioValve, which Gonnelli himself founded in 1998 and where he remains as CEO, according to public filings. Gonnelli said he plans to move the 42 employees at BioValve’s facility in Westborough to the Shrewsbury site sometime in March.
Privately held Valeritas is also in the midst of a deal to become a publicly traded company through a reverse merger with New York-based Paramount Acquisition Corp., a shell company formed in 2005 for the purpose of completing such a transaction, according to U.S. Securities and Exchange filings.
The merger deal was initiated after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Valeritas’ h-Patch insulin delivery system. An answer to bulky, catheter-based pumps, the h-Patch is a ChapStick tube-sized device that delivers insulin through a tiny needle for patients with type 2 diabetes. Company officials in a release last August said the product is capable of grabbing a share of the $19 billion worldwide market for diabetes products.
Still, Valeritas faces sizable competitors in the market for minimally invasive insulin-delivery systems. Early this week, Cambridge biotechnology firm Alkermes Inc. said that Indianapolis-based pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly & Co. would fund Alkermes’ construction of manufacturing facilities in Chelsea to make an inhaled insulin powder and other products. Both companies are conducting Phase 3 clinical trials of a system that uses a small inhaler to deliver insulin powder.
Valeritas since August has been assembling a team of executives with experience from life sciences powerhouses such as Abbott Laboratories, SanofiAventis SA and Johnson & Johnson. With initial plans to market the h-Patch directly to physicians and long-term care facilities, according to Gonnelli, the company is also in talks with potential marketing partners to provide worldwide distribution of the product.
© Copyright 2007 Mass High Tech.
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