Gilead Sciences, Inc. Will Employ 500 People At New SoCal Campus

Gilead Sciences, Inc. Will Employ 500 People At New SoCal Campus

September 30, 2014

By Jessica Wilson, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff

Gilead is set to bring 500 news jobs to the Southern California city of La Verne, as the biopharma company builds its own in-house campus, the Inland Daily Bulletin reported this week.

The previous owner of the 23-acre parcel of land, Trammell Crow Co., had planned for the area to consist of 11 buildings of various tenants called the La Verne Technology and Trade Center. Trammell abandoned the project and sold the land to CT Realty who has been developing the property with Gilead to serve as a campus for the company—not as a technology park with various tenants.

Gilead currently has a facility in San Dimas, Calif., which the La Verne campus will replace. That manufacturing facility, which is where Gilead produces the antifungal drug AmBisome, the HIV drug Viread and the inhaled cystic fibrosis treatment Cayston, has had problems with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The San Dimas facility was the focus of a Food and Drug Administration warning letter in 2010 that raised concerns about the manufacturing environment for AmBisome, [and] quality procedures and controls for Viread. The FDA sent a widely reported letter expressing “a generalized concern over the effectiveness of the San Dimas quality unit in carrying out its responsibilities.”

The Gilead proposal winnows the massive projects down to a single building, with a maximum size of 400,000 square feet and a rooftop elevation of 75 feet to accommodate manufacturing equipment. The La Verne City Council members welcome Gilead’s presence, with Councilwoman Robin Carder saying, “I am thrilled La Verne was chosen.” Carder also noted that Gilead’s presence would drive the creation of new business to serve the 500 new employees.

In order to provide more information to the La Verne community about Foster City, Calif.-based Gilead, Fred Kilpatrick, the biopharma firm’s engineering director, was quoted as saying, “We primarily focus on cures or improved treatments of significant diseases. Our sterile intravenous products are under strict regulation guidelines by the Food and Drug Administration and other regulatory agencies.”

Senior Planner of the City of La Verne Eric Scherer, told the paper that the campus will be a series of connected buildings “which will have the appearance of a more modern, corporate headquarters for one of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies.”

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