Boehringer Ingelheim has opened a €60m ($66.8m) research building in Vienna, Austria, as the company looks to double down in the oncology therapeutics space.
The building is named after Angelika Amon, a Viennese pioneer in cell biology who died in 2020 following a battle with ovarian cancer. Boehringer Ingelheim said the scientist “was closely connected” to the company.
The Angelika Amon research building will house 150 employees across 11 floors, according to a 25 September press release.
The building has architectural additions, which are part of a drive by the company to become carbon-neutral by 2030. Photovoltaic arrays on the roof and the façade will save 45 tons of carbon dioxide a year while electrochromic glass darkens automatically with sunlight and reduces cooling requirements by 30%.
Boehringer Ingelheim said the laboratories would allow scientists to “achieve their goal to develop innovative therapies for people living with cancer”, though it did not specify which cancer indications would be researched.
Boehringer Ingelheim did not immediately respond to Pharmaceutical Technology for comment on which oncology indications would be initially targeted or how the departmental makeup of the workforce would look.
The building’s development is part of a five-year $7.8bn investment plan by Boehringer Ingelheim. As part of the investment, the company opened a biomass power plant in Ingelheim, Germany, in January this year, and completed the Biologicals Development Centre in Biberach last year. A chemical innovation plant, also in Ingelheim, is currently under construction, with an opening slated in 2026.
Boehringer Ingelheim’s innovation unit head Paola Casarosa said: “Our goal is to create more health for humans and animals. Especially in the field of oncology, there is still a massive unmet medical need. We are working with great enthusiasm to make cancer a treatable disease."
The company’s global head of cancer research Norbert Kraut added that “around one-third of the new products at Boehringer Ingelheim will come from oncology” in the future.
In its 2023 full-year earnings release in April this year, the company said it had plans to start ten new Phase II and Phase III trials in the next 12-18 months. This would support a target of 25 treatments it’s aiming to bring to market by 2030.
Boehringer Ingelheim acquired Nerio Therapeutics for $1.3bn in July as part of its cancer push, gaining a preclinical immune checkpoint inhibitor programme that it said would become a “key centrepiece” of its immuno-oncology portfolio.
