Another company has joined the growing cluster of pharmaceutical and biotech enterprises at Devens.
At a formal ribbon-cutting ceremony Tuesday, Jan. 31, Seqens, a French manufacturer of pharmaceutical products, unveiled a glittering new research and development lab in a formerly unoccupied building at 67 Buena Vista Street. The rehabilitated 16,000-square-foot facility—roughly a third of an acre—doubles the research capacity of the company, which plans to also double its scientific staff from 20 to as many as 40 researchers by 2026.
CEO Pierre Luzeau said the company had chosen Devens as the location for its first R&D facility in the United States because of its proximity to Boston and its concentration of drug-discovery and pharmaceutical manufacturing companies, which he described as “the most dynamic in the world.” In a short speech he also noted the concentration of universities in Cambridge and elsewhere in Massachusetts, sources of innovation as well as future talent for the biotech industry.
Seqens CEO Pierre Luzeau and Christophe Eychenne-Baron, director of global research and development, speak with state Sen.Jamie Eldridge and state Rep. Dan Sena during a tour after a ribbon-cutting ceremony for Seqens’ new lab in Devens, Jan. 31. (Photos by Lisa Aciukewicz)
Director of R&D at the Devens lab Nayam Amin told the Press that his group had been at Devens since 2001, getting its start as PCI Synthesis at the Devens Innovation Center on Jackson Road before being acquired by Seqens. The lab outgrew its Jackson Road space and needed more room and state-of-the-art equipment to pursue multiple projects and keep up with trends in the industry. The Devens Enterprise Commission, which regulates development at Devens, wrote in its just-released 2022 annual report that the Seqens lab is a “great example” of how the incubation center on Jackson Road allows businesses to grow and stay within Devens as they expand.
Because the new lab was a renovation of an existing building, the DEC was able to issue a so-called Level 1 building permit which does not require a formal review by the DEC.
Due to the amount of equipment on the roof, the project also required a review by MassDevelopment to ensure it met the design guidelines for the innovation zone in which it is located. The Press asked MassDevelopment to confirm the review had taken place, but was told by a spokesperson it was the DEC’s responsibility. Lowitt said that because of a recent turnover in personnel at MassDevelopment, the agency may not have realized the responsibility was theirs. However, he added, the prior use of the Buena Vista building “whose exterior did not change much if at all from what is currently in play,” did meet the guidelines.
Should not disturb residents
Before issuing the permit, the DEC asked its sound consultants to ensure that mechanical equipment and vents on the new site’s roof complied with the agency’s noise regulations. The consultants concluded that because the lab will operate on weekdays and daytime only, there was no need for additional sound mitigation or noise studies. If the hours of operation changed, DEC Director Peter Lowitt warned in a March 2022 email, additional review could be required. Since 2010 and a long-running dispute among the DEC, Mill Road residents, and Evergreen Solar, a now-bankrupt solar cell manufacturer, the agency has been careful to ensure that the noise of any commercial activity at Devens does not disturb residents in the community or adjacent towns.
Devens Enterprise Commission Director Peter Lowitt (left) and state Sen. Jamie Eldridge listen as the Seqens CEO explains how the Devens lab will work with the lab in France
Seqens is a $1.4 billion company based in Lyons, France, with 10 R&D centers and 24 manufacturing sites located throughout Europe, Asia, and North America. The company has a manufacturing plant in Newburyport, which it will use to test the processes it develops at Devens for manufacturing new products. The Devens lab will collaborate with a similar facility in Paris, France.
The company is best known as a supplier of generic products such as the active ingredients for aspirin and acetaminophen. But the company is also a provider of lipids and polymers used to deliver products such as the mRNA molecules in COVID-19 vaccines to their intended targets. These are “unbelievably complex” molecules, CEO Luzeau and Christophe Eychenne-Baron, Seqens director of global R&D, told attendees on Tuesday’s tour of the facility. The new lab will accelerate the development of what are known as nanoparticles, particles as thin as a cell membrane, invisible to the human eye, that are seen as the future of drug delivery.
The ribbon-cutting drew a crowd of several dozen dignitaries, Seqens officials, and scientists who packed a small conference room to hear comments from Luzeau, state Sen. Jamie Eldridge, and French Consul General Mustafa Soykurt. After the ribbon-cutting, visitors donned disposable lab coats and were led through the white-walled clean rooms of the facility, sparsely equipped with the devices that will be used to develop and analyze products of the company’s research.
The new lab, which will be fully equipped and occupied by the end of February, joins a growing cluster of biotech facilities along Jackson Road at Devens, including Bristol-Myers Squibb, which has just completed a third building on its campus, and a six-building, 750,000-square-foot biomanufacturing complex with research and development lab space on Jackson Road between Lake George and Givry streets. At Tuesday’s tour, Sen. Eldridge described the Jackson Road complex as the largest biomanufacturing facility in the eastern United States.
