Merck Wilmington labs to be on ‘forefront’ of biotech

ORIGINAL SOURCE: Delaware Business Times

WILMINGTON — Merck & Company’s newly announced $1 billion research and development lab will position the pharmaceutical company to be on the forefront of biotech breakthroughs, executives told top Delaware science leaders this week.

The $200 billion pharmaceutical company plans to manufacture next-generation biologics, placing Merck ahead of the curve for complex treatments. It’s so important that Merck Senior Vice President of Biologic Operations David Maraldo said equipment will be “installed on day one” that has the ability to link two molecules together in drug manufacturing.

“Finding better drugs which will allow for much better targeting as well as a toxicity profile than conventional therapies makes it really exciting to be at the forefront of biotech in Wilmington,” he said.

Maraldo spoke about plans for the Merck Wilmington campus on June 11 at a Delaware Bioscience Association meeting. Merck expects to open its lab by 2028 with the manufacturing component opening later in 2030.

During his presentation, Maraldo showed renderings as well as offered a top-down view of the company’s global presence. Delaware was chosen among Pennsylvania, Maryland, North Carolina, Massachusetts and other states where Merck has facilities for the project and state officials approved $30 million in taxpayer-backed grants to help seal the deal.

In the long term, Merck could have the chance to extend its production of monoclonal antibody productions. At the end of 2024, the company was granted U.S. Food and Drug Administration acceptance for one such antibody to treat infants during RSV season.

“That would expand the scope of what we’re trying to do initially,” Maraldo said. “Our intent is to establish this as a U.S. hub for Keytruda. It will start as one of the first products being manufactured out of this asset.”

Keytrudua is Merck’s oncology star product, generating $29.5 billion in sales last year. Merck plans on phasing its contract production overseas to Delaware, as well as some lines from New York.

“The scope and driver behind this investment [in Wilmington] is how we continue to look ahead of what our manufacturing network will need, what are our core technologies that we have gaps in, where geographically we need to be situated to be able to drive innovation as fast as possible to the patient,” he said.

Merck plans to build 470,000 square feet of lab and office space at the site. That will include three production suites for analytical testing and warehousing for the biologics. The plan is to grow into the space into a full-fledged life science campus within the Chestnut Run Innovation and Science Park.

The pharmaceutical company has said preliminary plans include hiring at least 500 people when it opens its Wilmington site. Maraldo declined to give a breakdown of management and skilled tech workers. He did acknowledge that some of the products coming out of the Delaware site would be manufactured for the first time ever, so analytical skills will be highly sought after in candidates on “the shop floor” of the life sciences business.

Maraldo added that Merck saw a future where the company could work with the University of Delaware which Merck has routinely hired graduates from and which hosts the National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals.

“We know there’s a lot of opportunity within the university system and the institutions that exist will provide us opportunities to build a workforce for the future,” he said.