Bucking the Trend: Regeneron Pharmaceuticals to Hire 500 New Employees

While attending the Advanced Learning Institute conference “Social Media and Pharma” earlier this week I happened to sit down next to Laura Lindsay, a member of Tarrytown, NY-based Regeneron Pharmaceuticals’ corporate communications team. Not surprisingly, we struck up a conversation and I learned that unlike most pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies Regeneron is looking to hire 500 new employee over the next year or so. Yes, you heard it correctly: 500 NEW EMPLOYEES. The company currently employs about 1,200 people.

Regeneron’s hiring spree is largely based on a lucrative research relationship with its partner Sanofi-Aventis and pending positive results from three Phase III clinical trials for several drugs that the company is developing to treat colon cancer, gout and macular degeneration. Industry analysts predict that approval of any or all of the three new drugs may allow Regeneron to Its products could eventually take on Roche Holding AG's $6 billion cancer drug, Avastin, and $3 billion Lucentis eye-disease medicine. The gout drug could attract annual sales of $500 million or more, analysts estimate.

Regeneron is currently not profitable and has one of the largest research budgets (in excess of $700 million) in the biotechnology industry. The 20 year old company sells only one product called Arcalyst; which was approved to treat rare genetic conditions such as Familial Cold Auto-inflammatory Syndrome (FCAS) or Muckle-Wells Syndrome (MWS). Arcalyst annually generates about $20 million in sales. Its current market capitalization is about $2.0 billion. Interestingly, I used to occasionally hang out with one of the company’s founders while I was a postdoc at Columbia Medical School.

While I don’t exactly know what types of jobs are available at Regeneron, you can easily find out for yourselves by visiting the company’s job search center. To learn more about Regeneron please click here.

If anybody out there knows of other life sciences companies that are hiring, please send me the information and I will post it!

Hat tip to Laura for the heads up!

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting (maybe things are really starting to turn around)!!!!!!!!!!!!



 

Economic Recovery: US Contract Biomanufacturing Companies Are Experiencing an Upswing

For the past decade or more, small to mid-sized biotechnology companies had been outsourcing production of their preclinical and clinical protein-based products to Asian contract manufacturing organizations (CMOs). This was because manufacturing and labor costs were lower and product quality was consistent with Western standards and requirements. However, the recent economic down turn coupled with rising prices at Asian CMOs (mainly driven by increasing labor and project management costs) has forced many small to mid-sized companies to rely again on American CMOs to manufacture their products. Unlike cash-rich, larger companies, US small to midsize companies generally lack the financial resources and personnel to effectively manage operations in Asia. Many industry analysts contend that the lower initial costs of Asia-based companies are usually offset by the money and resources need to oversee a project.

While business returning from Asia improved the financial outlook for some American CMOs, 2009 was a bad year for most firms that service small to mid-sized pharma and biotech companies. However, industry analysts expect 2010 to be better than 2009. More importantly, the return of biomanufacturing to the US may signal the beginning of a new trend in the biomanufacturing outsourcing industry.

Until next time....

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!!!!