Situated in Boulder, Colorado, the LakeCentre plant will increase manufacturing and production capacity to support AstraZeneca’s portfolio of biologics medicines.
AstraZeneca aims to undertake refurbishment and infrastructure improvements to the facility.
The facility is anticipated to be operational and licensed for commercial production by late 2017. It will offer additional capacity within AstraZeneca’s biologics operations.
It will double the biologics manufacturing capacity in the US to meet the needs of the company’s pipeline.
Biologics currently make up 50% of the company’s pipeline with over 120 ongoing programmes, including more than 30 in clinical development.
AstraZeneca executive vice-president for operations and information technology Pam Cheng said: "The addition of the Boulder facility will support the progression of biotech drug candidates across our main therapeutic areas as we continue to bring innovative new treatments to patients.
"This site will play an important role in our future commercial production and give AstraZeneca and MedImmune, our global biologics research and development arm, the flexibility and capacity to meet the needs of our rapidly growing biologics portfolio."
The purchase of the LakeCentre facility is AstraZeneca’s latest move to expand its biologics manufacturing capacity, following a $285m investment in a new plant in Sweden announced in May.