Bristol-Myers Squibb is once again growing its footprint in the fast-growing immuno-oncology R&D world. The biopharma company inked a lease on the third and final facility BioMed Realty owns at Woodside Technology Park in Redwood City, CA, opening the door to an expansion of its biologics discovery team, set to grow from the 250 now employed at the hub to as many as 400 with the add-on.
Bristol-Myers’ deal nabbed the last 62,000 square feet of space at the park, which brings its total in the Bay Area Peninsula biotech area to 256,000 square feet--a clean sweep of the campus it first moved into close to three years ago. A spokesperson for the company tells FierceBiotech that the expansion could add up to 150 staffers on site.
The campus is devoted primarily to the company’s big R&D efforts in immuno-oncology, a field that Bristol-Myers now dominates with its pioneering drug Opdivo.
The leases for Bristol-Myers started back in 2013, when the company inked a contract for the first big building on the site. The second facility was taken in 2014.
During the past three years Bristol-Myers has been steadily upping its game in I/O. Opdivo--a pioneering drug designed to unleash an immune system assault on cancer cells--has been quickly penetrating the vast oncology market, nabbing label expansions and competing head-to-head with Merck’s Keytruda.
"The expansion of our facilities in Redwood City is evidence of the value that Bristol-Myers Squibb sees in the Bay Area scientific community and our relationship with BioMed Realty," said Nils Lonberg, head of oncology biology discovery at Bristol-Myers Squibb.