Irish-owned APC and VLE Therapeutics is doubling its team and building a new R&D centre at its Cherrywood Campus headquarters in Dublin.
Irish multinational biotech and pharma group, APC and VLE Therapeutics has today (9 January) announced a major €100m expansion to its headquarters in Cherrywood, Co Dublin.
The expansion will see pharma player APC and its biotech spin-out VLE Therapeutics grow its team by 300. It will also create a new ‘Medicine Accelerator’ centre that aims to bring new medicines to market faster and more efficiently.
The 300 new jobs will mostly be R&D roles, bringing the company’s total staff numbers to over 600 people. The new centre will serve as a global research hub for APC and VLE Therapeutics’ established operations. It will aid the company as it focuses on the manufacture and distribution of medicines for conditions such as respiratory diseases, HIV and Alzheimer’s.
APC and VLE Therapeutics has been based at Cherrywood Campus since it initially opened in late 2022. It announced a hiring and investment drive for the centre in 2021. The Cherrywood campus is a location for some of Ireland’s top life sciences employers, such as Genuity Science, Abbott and Zoetis.
Mark Barrett, CEO and co-founder of APC and VLE Therapeutics, said that company’s latest expansion will have a huge impact on the local pharma scene, as well as internationally.
“Reimagining how medicines are developed and accelerated to patients is our motivation, our purpose,” he said, adding that the existing team of employees is “simply extraordinary”.
The expansion and planned construction of the new centre will focus on building tech such as AI into the medical manufacturing process. “This new expansion will further strengthen our competitiveness through increased integration of the latest developments in sustainability, artificial intelligence and breakthrough science,” said Barrett. “It will enable our team to reimagine and transform medicine development and manufacture.”
He paid tribute to Enterprise Ireland and the Government for its support in accelerating the planned expansion. Simon Coveney, Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment and Leo Clancy, CEO of Enterprise Ireland, both welcomed the announcement.
“One of Enterprise Ireland’s core priorities is to assist Irish owned companies to scale internationally, while creating high-value jobs at home,” said Clancy. “Today’s announcement is a concrete example of how this can be achieved and we look forward to continuing to work closely with APC and VLE as they implement their ambitious strategy and delivering innovative health solutions to a global market.”
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