277,000‑SF Pearland Biotech Building Sold, World’s Largest Cell & Gene Therapy Facility
New Lonza building in Pearland.
HOUSTON – Zeller Realty Group has acquired the Lonza Viral Therapy Facility, a 276,770-square-foot biotechnology building located on Kirby Drive in Pearland, south of Houston.
HFF represented the seller, Pinchal & Co., and also worked on behalf of Zeller, a Chicago-based investment and development firm, to secure an acquisition loan through Bank of Texas.
The facility sits on an 11-acre site at 14905 Kirby Drive within Pearland’s growing Lower Kirby Urban District. The 1,200-acre Lower Kirby development aims to become a leading life sciences hub and already hosts several medical and research-related firms.
Lower Kirby is situated near the southwest corner of Beltway 8 and State Highway 288, about eight miles south of the Texas Medical Center, the world’s largest medical complex with more than 100,000 employees.
Completed in the fourth quarter of 2017, the Lonza Viral Therapy Facility is fully leased on a long-term, triple-net basis to Lonza America Inc., a subsidiary of Lonza Group AG, a Swiss biotechnology and pharmaceutical company.
Lonza’s Pearland site is the world’s largest cell and gene therapy manufacturing facility. The building includes office space, a process development unit, quality control laboratories, a fully segregated fill/finish suite, and independent modular cleanrooms designed to manufacture cell therapy products.
Lonza describes the site as a “first-of-its-kind, state-of-the-art manufacturing facility” with capacity to produce treatments for thousands of patients suffering from rare genetic disorders or life-threatening diseases.
By year-end, Lonza expected to employ about 200 people at the Pearland facility.
“Lonza Houston will serve as a center of excellence for cell-and-gene-therapy process development from concept through pre-clinical, clinical and commercialization, all the way to the patient,” said Andreas Weiler, Business Unit Head for Emerging Technologies at Lonza Pharma & Biotech. “This facility has the potential to produce treatment for thousands of patients under one roof. It will set a new standard in biopharmaceutical manufacturing and stand as one of four centers of excellence in cell and gene therapy within our global network spanning three continents.”
A grand opening ceremony was held in Pearland on April 10. Founded in 1897 in the Swiss Alps, Lonza is now a global company with more than 100 sites and offices and about 14,500 full-time employees.
“Lonza is committed to the evolution and cultivation of a diverse medical and life-science community in the Greater Houston area for many years to come,” said Marc Funk, Chief Operating Officer of Lonza Pharma & Biotech. “The site is well positioned to meet the demands of the growing cell-and-gene-therapy field. Combining this leading-edge facility with our deep experience in cell and gene therapy will give biopharmaceutical companies and academic researchers a significant advantage and ultimately benefit the patients they serve.”
Cell therapy involves administering living cells into a patient to grow, replace, or repair damaged tissue as a means to treat disease. These cells may be autologous (from the patient) or allogeneic (from a donor).
Gene therapy comprises techniques that modify, replace, inactivate, or introduce genes to treat, prevent, or potentially cure disease. Approaches include transferring genes directly into the patient (in vivo) or modifying a patient’s cells outside the body and reintroducing them (ex vivo). Both approaches use nucleic acids—DNA or RNA—delivered by carriers known as vectors, which may be viral or non-viral.
In the transaction for the building, HFF’s investment advisory and debt placement team included Jeff Hollinden and Cameron Cureton.
Lonza Group Ltd is headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, and is listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange.
