TOKYO — CMIC CMO USA has been based in Cranbury for 16 years. And few people know that.
It’s something the leaders of CMIC publicly acknowledge — and something they want to change. The Memorandum of Understanding it signed with Rutgers University on Monday in Japan may help it do just that.
CMIC USA, a subsidiary of Japan’s top contract development and manufacturing organization, and Rutgers announced a partnership to establish a Center of Excellence in Advanced Pharmaceutical Manufacturing at CMIC’s 224,000-square-foot facility in New Jersey.
The move will help CMIC double its manpower in New Jersey.
Gov. Phil Murphy, who announced the agreement during the 2023 New Jersey East Asian Economic Mission, said he couldn’t be more excited.
“This is a big deal for us,” he said. “CMIC’s presence in New Jersey was already a big deal. But this collaboration with Rutgers will take your presence, and I believe Rutgers’ presence, to a different level.
“It means more jobs, meaningfully more jobs. It means Rutgers will be able to locate one of its most important centers for innovation alongside you at CMIC. It’s exactly the sort of collaboration that we think New Jersey is built for, which is innovation, in this case, life sciences, pharmaceuticals and higher education all in together with support from the state.”
Since 2006, the Rutgers School of Engineering has been at the forefront of pharmaceutical research through the Center for Structured Organic Particulate Systems. C-SOPS has assembled a cross-disciplinary team of researchers from major universities, working in close collaboration with industry leaders and regulatory authorities to improve pharmaceutical, food and agricultural product manufacturing methods.
Takahiro Ueda, CEO of CMIC USA, said the project will help put the company on the proverbial map in a meaningful way.
“Rutgers brings expertise in advanced and continuous manufacturing, while our suppliers provide the latest technological advances in equipment,” he said. “This expertise allows us to integrate state-of-the-art infrastructure for rapid product and continuous process development in both non-GMP and GMP environments, giving CMIC unique capabilities to accelerate manufacturing of investigational and commercial products for the benefit of patients around the world.”
Helping patients … creating jobs: That all works for Murphy.
“In my six years as governor, we have signed a lot of memoranda of understanding, and all of them are meaningful,” he said. “But I can’t think of any memoranda of understanding that we’ve signed that had a more tangible impact on jobs, investment and most importantly, the health and welfare of Japanese and Americans in both places.”
