Crown Bioscience will invest $1 million into establishment of a pharmaceutical R&D facility in Louisiana at New Iberia Research Center, one of the country’s largest nonhuman primate labs.
The $1 million injection, according to a press release, will create 10 new direct jobs with an average annual wage of $70,000. Local economic development authority estimates that the new center will add an additional 14 indirect jobs.
CrownBio, headquartered in Santa Clara, California, currently has research branches in China, the U.K., San Diego and Indianapolis. The company’s key products are several oncology platforms for use in drug discovery, among them are patient-derived xenograft models and 8,000 viable human tumors the company acquired in 2015 from Molecular Response.
Last March, the company acquired Indianapolis, IN-based PreClinOmics, adding cardiovascular and metabolic diseases preclinical capabilities to its portfolio. It is exactly in these two fields the global CRO intends to advance with this new project.
As CrownBio’s CEO Jean-Pierre Wery said in a statement, the company eyed Louisiana, and NIRC to be specific, because of a growing biomedical science community. “It was important for us to be located at a facility with multiple research capabilities that could harmonize well with the various efficacy and model development studies conducted by CrownBio,” he said.
A subsidiary of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, the New Iberia Research Center houses over 6,000 nonhuman primates for applied and basic research. The site itself provides contract research services in fields like pharmacodynamics, safety monitoring, dose finding and vaccine development, etc.
The deal utilized the state’s Quality Jobs Program, and was facilitated by the Iberia Industrial Development Foundation, One Acadiana and LED. CrownBio will begin operating at the New Iberia Research Center within this month.