Astellas to spend $70M on new biotech campus in South San Francisco

By Brian Buntz | July 29, 2022

Astellas Pharma (TSE: 4503) plans to establish a biotech campus in South San Francisco, California, as the core of its West Coast R&D operations.

Located near Genentech and Verily Life Sciences facilities, the site at 480 Forbes Boulevard will consolidate several Astellas business units and functions currently based throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.

The operations will be housed in a 154,000-ft² building.

The company plans to spend $70 million to construct the new facility, including lab and co-working space.

Astellas has ramped up its focus on cell and gene therapy following its 2019 acquisition of Audentes Therapeutics for approximately $3 billion. Astellas Pharma is among the largest cell and gene therapy firms in the world.

Astellas already has an East Coast biomedical innovation hub in Boston area.

The company anticipates completing the construction of the new site in the summer of 2023.

About The Author

Brian Buntz

The pharma and biotech editor of WTWH Media, Brian is a veteran journalist with more than 15 years of experience covering an array of life science topics, including clinical trials, drug discovery and development and medical devices. Before coming to WTWH, he served as content director focused on connected devices at Informa. In addition, Brian covered the medical device sector for 10 years at UBM. At Qmed, he overhauled the brand’s news coverage and helped to grow the site’s traffic volume dramatically. He had previously held managing editor roles on two of the company’s medical device technology publications. Connect with him on LinkedIn or email at bbuntz@wtwhmedia.com.