Wilmington-based Pharmaceutical Product Development (PPD) has announced the expansion of its labs in Athlone, Ireland, to expand capacity and operations.
 
PPD’s Ireland facility offers pharmaceutical development services in Europe, the Middle East and Asia Pacific.
 
The Athlone lab, one of the largest of its kind in Europe, added 4,300 square feet of new laboratory space for analytical testing of biopharmaceuticals and inhalation devices, bringing the facility to a total of 41,500 square feet of testing and support space.
 
Athlone is one of PPD’s two good manufacturing practices (GMP) labs in operation, the other being in Middleton, Wisconsin.
 
“As far as staffing at the Athlone GMP lab is concerned, we have continued to grow our employee base as we had projected to the point that we currently have around 150 employees in that operation,” explained PPD senior manager Randy Buckwalter. “We plan to add about 50 more as a result of this expansion and the ongoing growth of our GMP lab business, which now employs more than 1,300 professionals around the world.”
 
“The expansion of the Athlone good manufacturing practices lab represents our ongoing investment in the continued growth of our contract research operations in Ireland and around the world to provide our clients with best-in-class laboratory services and state-of-the-art facilities and instrumentation,” said David Johnston, executive vice president of global laboratory services for PPD Laboratories in a news release Thursday.
 
Johnston said, “Our ability to deliver global scientific, technical and development expertise with expanded laboratory capacity enables us to meet the growing demand for these services in Europe, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific.”
 
The company opened its Athlone facility in 2010. The Athlone lab is licensed by the Health Products Regulatory Authority to support both investigational medicinal products and marketed products. It is certified for quality control of medicinal products, including cell-based assay services for biologics.
 
PPD was founded in Wilmington in 1985 and now has offices in 46 countries.