AstraZeneca kicks off work on 1,500-person R&D center in Kendall Square

AstraZeneca kicks off work on 1,500-person R&D center in Kendall Square

AstraZeneca is again building in a city called Cambridge. Shortly after completing its late, over-budget R&D center in Cambridge, U.K., the British pharma has begun work across the Atlantic on a facility in Kendall Square that will house its staffers alongside their Alexion colleagues.

The new facility will serve as both a strategic R&D center and Alexion’s corporate headquarters, housing 1,500 R&D, commercial and corporate employees at one purpose-built site. AstraZeneca, which expects to finish the center in 2026, wants to set down roots in Cambridge, Massachusetts to get closer to potential partners in the biotech hotspot, as CEO Pascal Soriot explained in a statement.

“Kendall Square, Cambridge, is at the heart of the life sciences and innovation hub of the greater Boston area, and our new site will put us right at the center of this space. The move will provide access to some of the most innovative partners in academia and biotech, offering opportunities to accelerate our growth and collaborate with like-minded organizations as we continue to push the boundaries of science to deliver advances for patients,” Soriot said.

Soriot’s comment is in line with the thinking behind AstraZeneca’s move to Cambridge, U.K., which saw it relocate staff from Alderley Park so they could “rub shoulders with some of the world’s best scientists and clinicians carrying out some of the world’s leading research.” The move established the U.K. site as one of AstraZeneca’s three main centers, the others being in Gaithersburg, Maryland and Gothenburg, Sweden. Around 3,500 people work at the Gaithersburg facility.

AstraZeneca previously pulled a neuroscience team out of an office in Kendall Square. The proposed facility is a much larger undertaking, leading to questions about whether the project will be subject to the sorts of overruns that dogged the U.K. build. Soriot addressed the concern on a call with the media.

“There is no large capital expenditure linked to this because … we have a contract with a very well-known and very professional property developer [BXP] who is actually building this site and we are going to be leasing it. So, it’s a different proposition compared to Cambridge in the U.K.,” the CEO said.

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