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Incyte Corp. imagines its fourth building to be a five-story structure with 400,000 square feet of office and lab space. | PHOTO COURTESY OF DELAWARE PLANNING LAND USE SERVICES[/caption]
WILMINGTON — Four weeks after Incyte Corp. cut the ribbon on its research and development lab at its Alapocas campus, the pharmaceutical company unveiled plans on a future fourth building that would house up to 1,200 employees.
Plans filed with the Office of State Planning Coordination show a five-story office and lab building developed on 20 acres of land that was previously part of the lower school campus of the nearby Wilmington Friends School. The pharmaceutical company acquired the land from the school for $50 million in 2019.
Incyte proposes a long, snaking 400,000-square-foot building that would sit on top of a parking garage with enough spaces for the entire campus. The company is also considering solar panels and “green roofs,” or vegetation systems, like it did with its large third building.
“This space will continue to allow us to grow. While you all know we just opened up our new building that only got about half of our employees back to the campus,” Incyte Executive Vice President of Human Resources Paula Swain told members of various state agencies at Wednesday’s Preliminary Land Use Service meeting.
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The Wilmington Friends School Lower Campus, seen here, is the next site of Incyte expansion. | DBT PHOTO BY JACOB OWENS[/caption]
Incyte brought 300 employees to its headquarters campus when it opened its new office and lab space earlier this month, and the space has room for another 140 employees. That staff previously was working out of the Delaware Innovation Space. The ribbon cutting marked the second major expansion at Incyte’s Augustine Cut-Off headquarters since it opened its 154,000-square-foot, glass-and-grass-covered building in 2017.
But Swain noted that there were another 500 employees working out of Chadds Ford, Pa., in leased space. The fourth and perhaps final piece of the Incyte campus would bring that workforce to the First State. The public company has about 2,000 employees globally, with about half based in the Delaware area.
“We want them here in Delaware because this is our home,” Swain said. “And so this space will allow us to not only do that but have sufficient growth for the future. We continue to discover and develop drugs, and this will really allow us to have a very long runway here.”
Incyte develops drugs primarily in oncology and hematology treatment, but much of the company’s success can be pointed to Jakafi, its blockbuster small-molecule drug that is used in the treatment of rare bone marrow cancer, blood diseases and in certain bone marrow donations. Last year, sales and royalties from Jakafi totaled more than $2.4 billion, or more than 80% of the company’s revenues.
Last year, Incyte won approval for Opzelura, a topical eczema treatment, last year. Incyte hopes to earn U.S. Food & Drug Administration approval for Opzelura to treat vitiligo in July.
“That approval is causing us to continue to expand and we have an expectation that one may have a couple of more approvals this year. We continue to discover and develop drugs, and this will really allow us to have a very long runway here,” Swain added.
