Merck is moving ahead with ambitious hiring plans at a massive vaccine factory in Durham, with a goal of adding another 150 employees this year.
The new jobs will come on top of the 230 people Merck hired last year, increasing the current total to 450. The facility is preparing to package and eventually grow vaccines to protect against chicken pox and other diseases.
The company announced plans in 2004 for the campus on 262 acres in northern Durham's Treyburn Corporate Park, further reinforcing the Triangle as a hub for vaccine production. In December, Novartis announced plans to expand its massive Holly Springs vaccine plant, and add 100 more jobs during the next two years.
At Merck this year, one focus is to catch up with expansions and rapid hiring, plant manager John Wagner said in a phone interview.
"We need to make sure we can staff and train people at the pace the business needs," Wagner said. "We've got a lot of work on our plate to train all the people we've added."
The Food and Drug Administration approved the first phase of the campus in November, which allows the factory to package chicken pox vaccine. That approval was delayed from last summer when the FDA had some questions about the plant's procedures and systems.
Additional expansions include a testing lab and a facility to grow chicken pox virus, rather than have it shipped in from another Merck site. Now that the FDA has given initial approval at the Durham plant, winning further regulatory approvals will be easier, Wagner said.
"We're just ramping up into production now" and the first vaccines from the Durham plant should reach the market in six to 12 months, he added.
Construction on several buildings is expected to finish in 2012, and officials anticipate the factory will win full regulatory approval in 2013.
In 2012, Merck will probably need to add about 100 more workers at the facility, and then hiring will probably level off, he said. The campus includes several buildings with a total of about 650,000 square feet.
Merck will consider the campus for future production, which could mean further expansion, although nothing is in the works now, Wagner said.
State and local officials lured Merck to Durham partly with the promise of incentives worth up to $45 million if it meets hiring milestones.
Vaccines are a crucial line of business for Merck.
Last week, the New Jersey-based drug maker reported a fourth-quarter loss and forecast weaker-than-expected 2011 earnings. Sales rose 20 percent to $12.1 billion in the fourth quarter.
Merck is still digesting its 2009 purchase of Schering-Plough, and is putting billions of dollars into efforts to find promising new products through its own research and other acquisitions. Kenneth Frazier, who took over as CEO on Jan. 1, needs new drugs to replace revenue from drugs facing generic competition.
Merck shares closed Thursday at $33.04, and are down 8 percent so far this year.
Assistant Business Editor Alan M. Wolf joined the N&O in 1999 covering the business of health care. He became an editor in 2001, and helps oversee the paper's daily business coverage and Sunday Work&Money section. He lives in Clayton with his wife and two children. Reach him at 919-829-4572 or
Comments
Millions in bribes could pay our teachers
Fri, 02/11/2011 - 15:15 — poisonedI wish we would stop using our tax money to bribe questionable, even dangerous and polluting, industries to move to our state. At least restrict any "incentives" or bribes to locally owned small businesses who are known to keep their money locally, hire more people, and care about the environment and people where they live.
There have been so many scandals attached to the vaccine industry, biotechnology, not to mention the theft and unfair distribution of natural resources, that we should have a steep series of checks and balances by those without conflicts of interest on all potentially harmful industries, much less bribing poison pushers to move here.
Merck & Government in Bed Together
Fri, 02/11/2011 - 12:06 — bensmysonWhen the primary profit center for Merck is vaccines and the primary buyer of those vaccines is the government, there should be some independent checks and balances when it comes to the use of these vaccines.
Merck's chicken pox vaccine is a live virus. Studies have documented that for a period of time after vaccination with a live virus vaccine, a person will "shed" some of that virus from their body, which may infect others. This is what is happening in Africa due to the use of the Oral Polio Vaccine and it is causing a mutated strain of the deadly virus. Most often, when a child comes down with chickenpox, that child stays home and is not out exposing the community for most of the time that they are infectious, but after a vaccination? Who keeps their children at home and away from older people for a couple of weeks while they may be shedding virus after being vaccinated? How is shingles provoked from shed vaccine different then shingles provoked from the wild chickenpox virus? We don't know. What about children who miss getting chickenpox in childhood because they were vaccinated...what happens when their immunity starts to wane..(which it always does with vaccines -- that's why you have to keep getting booster shots!) .will they be even more susceptible to provocation shingles?
Gary S. Goldman, Ph.D.: Currently serves as Founder and
Editor-in-Chief of the peer-reviewed medical journal Medical Veritas. Has recently authored five manuscripts concerning varicella, herpes zoster, and capture-recapture published in the European journal called Vaccine. Research published in the International Journal of Toxicology, 24(4):205-213, Universal Varicella Vaccination: Efficacy Trends and Effect on Herpes Zoster. Also, Vaccine, 23(25):3349-3355, Cost-benefit analysis of universal varicella vaccination in the U.S. taking into account the closely related herpes zoster epidemiology.
Dr. Goldman's findings have corroborated other independent researchers who estimate that if chickenpox were to be nearly eradicated by vaccination, the higher number of shingles cases could continue in the U.S. for up to 50 years; and that while death rates from chickenpox are already very low, any deaths prevented by vaccination will be offset by deaths from increasing shingles disease. Another recent peer-reviewed article authored by Dr. Goldman and published in Vaccine presents a cost-benefit analysis of the universal chicken pox (varicella) vaccination program. Goldman points out that during a 50-year time span, there would be an estimated additional 14.6 million (42%) shingles mcases among adults aged less than 50 years, presenting society with a substantial additional medical cost burden of $4.1 billion. This translates into $80 million annually, utilizing an estimated mean healthcare provider cost of $280 per shingles case.
After a child has had varicella (chickenpox), the virus becomes dormant and can reactivate later in adulthood in a closely related disease called shingles--both caused by the same varicella-zoster virus (VZV). It has long been known that adults receive natural boosting from contact with children infected with chicken pox that helps prevent the reactivation of shingles.
Based on Dr. Goldman's earlier communications with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Goldman maintains that epidemiologists from the CDC are hoping "any possible shingles epidemic associated with the can shigles vaccine be offset by treating adults with a shingles vaccine." This intervention would substitute for the boosting adults previously received naturally, especially during seasonal outbreaks of the formerly common childhood disease.
"Using a shingles vaccine to control shingles epidemics in adults would likely fail because adult vaccination programs have rarely proved successful," said Goldman. "There appears to be no way to avoid a mass epidemic of shingles lasting as long as several generations among adults."
Flu
Fri, 02/11/2011 - 09:40 — SusanBAnthonyI wish somebody could come up with a flu vaccine that works. Excuses don't help. I want a refund on the money I paid for the vaccines my family and I got this year. Saying "Oops" doesn't get the job done.