Agios Pharmaceuticals, a biopharmaceutical company focused on discovering and developing novel drugs in the rapidly emerging field of cancer metabolism, announced today that it has leased a 21,000 square-foot facility in Cambridge. This new facility creates the world’s largest laboratory dedicated to cancer metabolism research. To fully explore the untapped potential of cancer metabolism, Agios is focused on establishing an aggressive R&D product strategy that includes not only building the best scientific team in the field but also establishing a highly differentiated, fully integrated cell metabolism platform. Understanding the nexus of cancer and metabolism across tumor types and a variety of metabolic conditions is essential to effectively selecting and targeting key metabolic addiction points of cancer cells. “At Agios we are committed to building a transformative product company with a bold vision driven by great science with the best people. As part of this commitment, we believe our investment in a new fully equipped facility with biology, chemistry and deep platform capabilities is a critical part of our ability to explore this novel area of cancer therapeutics,” said Kevin Starr, interim Chief Executive Officer, Agios Pharmaceuticals and Partner, Third Rock Ventures. “It is exciting for our rapidly growing team to have state-of-the-art facilities that will allow us to apply our industry leading platform technologies to the advancement of our pipeline. We see the combination of high content cell imaging, cellular physiology, metabolomics and bioinformatics as not only highly differentiating for Agios but also essential to supporting our aggressive R&D product development plan,” said David White, Ph.D., Vice President, Platform, Agios. Agios’ new facility is located within the Forest City Enterprises’ University Park at MIT, located adjacent to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and minutes from the renowned research and academic institutions of Boston and Cambridge.
