When BeiGene co-founder and CEO John Oyler cuts the ribbon on the company’s $800 million, 42-acre state-of-the-art research and manufacturing facility at the Princeton West Innovation Center in Hopewell later Tuesday, he’ll rattle off all the usual reasons the next-generation oncology company is eager to dramatically increase its presence in the state.
Access to top talent. Closeness to other global life science companies. Opportunities for richly diverse clinical trials.
He’ll also offer one that may surprise some: New Jersey is a great place to do business.
“It’s a business-friendly environment, for sure,” Oyler told ROI-NJ.
Oyler’s words certainly will be welcomed by Gov. Phil Murphy, who is expected to attend the ceremony along with a host of other elected and industry officials.
Murphy has long pitched the idea that the attributes the state brings makes having one of the highest corporate business tax rates worth the added cost. It’s a notion many business leaders would challenge. Oyler is not one of them.
Oyler said he has been pro-New Jersey throughout the 14-year history of the company — one that has its earliest roots in both New Jersey and Pennsylvania. This has been especially true since the company announced in the summer of 2021 that it intended to build a state-of-the-art facility that will include commercial-stage biologic pharmaceutical manufacturing, clinical research & development and the BeiGene Center for Pharmacovigilance Innovation.
Oyler credited Lincoln Equities, which owns the Princeton West Innovation Center (BeiGene purchased the 42-acre site from it) for having the desire to work quickly on the project. The township of Hopewell, he said, has been just as accommodating and welcoming.
“In a remarkably short period of time, we’ve been able to go from a concept to something that now is real — a place where people can be functionally beginning, whether it’s manufacturing or running clinical trials or doing clinical research,” he said.
Oyler said BeiGene, which did not apply for any tax credits from the Economic Development Authority, intends to have hundreds of employees on site by 2025, with the possibility of adding hundreds more in the coming years.
Employees who had been working in temporary offices on the campus the past three years began moving to the new BeiGene site last week.
Oyler said he has been thrilled by the pace of the project.
“This is a very attractive situation to be in,” he said. “When there are issues or things that need to be done, they are acted on. It’s an extremely business-friendly environment with a lot of respect to the local community — and that’s the way it should be.”
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Oyler co-founded BeiGene with Wang Xiaodong in 2010 with two big goals in mind: to make impactful oncology medicines — and make them affordable, so everyone can benefit.
“(We) had this view that the biggest issue isn’t a lack of great science that’s working to help patients, it’s that the way the industry operates that is too expensive,” he said.
That’s proven to be true.
Read more from ROI-NJ:
BeiGene has been a huge success on the R&D side, quickly becoming a multibillion-dollar global brand with an oncology pipeline addressing 80% of cancer patients. The company, with more than 10,000 employees in 40 locations across five continents, recently got its latest landmark product, Brukinsa, a BTK inhibitor approved to treat follicular lymphoma in conjunction with other therapeutics, approved for use in the U.S.
That’s a game-changer for many.
And, even though the company has priced Brukinsa lower than the competitors in its class — in alignment with its mission — controlling costs has been a continual challenge throughout the company’s history, Oyler said.
The reason: BeiGene didn’t control all aspects of the cost structure.
“At first, I didn’t understand why we needed to have our own manufacturing,” he said. “We were going to work with third parties. But, pretty quickly, it became clear if you want to be cost-efficient, you’re really going to need to be in that business yourself. Otherwise, you don’t have all interests aligned with the goal of lowering the cost of making medicine.”
BeiGene began searching for a place where it could bring everything together. It looked at global opportunities — and it looked other locations in the U.S. where life sciences are booming, including growing areas in Boston, Silicon Valley and the research triangle in North Carolina — but the company kept coming back to New Jersey.
“New Jersey has 14 of the 20 largest pharmaceutical companies,” Oyler said. “It’s employing over 60,000 people directly in the industry. And it has been a core for biopharmaceutical manufacturing for decades. There are not many places in the world that can say that.”
The Hopewell facility will add to that in a big way. Initially, it will have 400,000 square feet of space dedicated to commercial-stage biologic pharmaceutical manufacturing — but it will have the ability to expand an additional 700,000 square feet in the years ahead.
Some of the company’s more than 4,000 employees involved in oncology research and development will work from there — helping to oversee the company’s numerous clinical trials (BeiGene currently is conducting more than 140 trials involving more than 20,000 patients worldwide).
Staffing the Hopewell campus will not be a problem, Oyler said.
“Whether it’s research, whether it’s manufacturing, whether it’s general capabilities across the board to help us understand how to build and run and operate a highly efficient global biopharmaceutical company, there’s tons of talent that we’re able to find and access in the area,” he said.
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The ribbon-cutting will be filled with elected officials and business leaders. None will be happier than Murphy.
“John’s a really good guy, and his team is outstanding,” Murphy said. “I can’t say enough good things about them. They’ve been great partners and I’m really excited to cut the ribbon.”
Debbie Hart, the CEO of BioNJ, is equally enthused.
“This momentous event marks the official addition of a vital new member of the ecosystem,” she said. “The collaboration, innovation and jobs that BeiGene is bringing to New Jersey will contribute to the community and provide hope and promise for patients.”
Oyler said he’s ready to quickly get the campus up to full speed.
“The state-of-the-art biologics manufacturing capacity is built toward the goal of, ‘How to be lower-cost and more efficient — how do we adopt the latest technology and be faster,’” he said.
The center will have 100,000 square feet of office space and will serve as the company’s flagship facility in the U.S.
“It’s a key part of a network that we’re building across the globe to be able to have our own resources and really be as cost efficient as we possibly can,” Oyler said.
“We already have a lot of people in this area, now that we have an office center and we’re starting to build out this clinical research and additional capabilities, there is a sense that this really is our major U.S.-based hub.”
As for the cost of doing business in New Jersey?
“You can always wish for less tax, but at the end of the day, especially for the type of business that we’re in, it’s about talent — and it’s about being able to do the things that are necessary,” Oyler said. “The fact that we could do this construction project in the time that we needed to do it, the fact that we can be zoned to do manufacturing, is important.
“I believe, as an American citizen, that we really want to build state-of-the-art biologic manufacturing in the United States. This is an example of that happening at a $800 million scale. It’s wonderful.”
Oyler feels the same way about New Jersey in general.
“We’re 100% happy with the experience we have had here,” he said. “We know what we’re getting, and we know that it’s a wonderful place to be.
“There will be a very meaningful and substantial core here. And I would not surprise me in any way, shape or form, if over the next 10 years, you see tremendous growth in New Jersey.
“It’s a great place to work — and it’s a great place to live, too.”