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[January 04, 2006]

Japanese drugmaker may expand Durham, N.C., presence

(Herald-Sun, The (Durham, NC) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Jan. 4--The new year just started but Durham is already angling to land a new manufacturing site.

Eisai Inc., which opened its Research Triangle Park campus in 1997, is mulling the construction of a new drug manufacturing facility, and Durham is one of the sites under consideration, according to company spokeswoman Judee Shuler. The new facility may mean 180 jobs, although Shuler said that was at the high-end of projections.

Still, Eisai has expanded twice since coming to RTP nine years ago and Durham officials would be happy for another.

Durham County Commissioners are scheduled to meet today and the topic of incentives for Eisai may come up in a closed session, said Commissioner Becky Heron.

"They've been a good corporate citizen and I would hope they would expand their operations here," Heron said. "Certainly, if they qualify under our incentive policy, I would look very favorably at what we needed to do, within our policy, to have that expansion."

But there are still plenty of hurdles facing the project -- one being that the company may not build it, Shuler said. At the same time the pharmaceutical company is evaluating sites, it is weighing whether to use a contract manufacturer instead of building its own site, she said.

And while Shuler wouldn't say how many other sites are being considered, she did say RTP was a strong contender. "That's certainly a strong possibility," Shuler said. A decision is expected this year, she said.

The new facility is slated to make cancer therapies that are currently in the testing stage. The company's leading cancer therapy is a breast cancer treatment that recently completed Phase II clinical trials.

Eisai couldn't use its existing facility in RTP because the cancer therapy must be made in a sterile environment. "It requires a separate process, facility," she said.

She noted even if the company decides on building a new facility in RTP, it would take two to three years to validate the site's manufacturing process. The potential therapy, identified as E7389, could be approved as early as 2007.

Eisai has 255 employees and 190,000 square feet of buildings on its 127-acre campus in RTP. The company has expanded twice since its original dedication of 85,000 square feet in November 1997. The most recent expansion, in November 2003, added 80,000 square feet of production, packaging and office space.

The U.S. arm of a Tokyo-based drug development firm, Eisai is among America's top 20 pharmaceutical companies. Teaneck, N.J.-based Eisai Inc. began production of its first drug, Aricept, in RTP in 1998. In addition to that drug, which treats Alzheimer's disease, Eisai has produced Aciphex, its drug to treat heartburn, in RTP since 2001.

Parent company Eisai Co. Ltd. began establishing a corporate and research structure in the United States as early as 1981, but it wasn't until 1994 that the firm established a process, research and bulk pharmaceutical company in Andover, Mass. In 1995, Eisai Inc. was established as its U.S. sales arm.

The company's pipeline includes drugs for sepsis, epilepsy and cancer, and most are in Phase I and Phase II trials. Eisai had U.S. sales of $2 billion in its fiscal 2004, which ended March 31, 2005.

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