RI Biotech Firm Relocates HQ to MA With 100,000-SF Lease

The three-story 20 Walkup Dr. building, which the firm will occupy fully, will serve both as RenaMed's headquarters and the commercial manufacturing facility for its Renal Bio-Replacement Therapy products for Acute Renal Failure. Terms of the long-term lease were not disclosed.

Joe Flynn, vice president at NAI Hunneman Commercial, represented RenaMed Biologics. Brian McKenzie, John Lashar and Paul Leone of Richards Barry Joyce & Partners represented the building's landlord, Campanelli Cos..

Richard Andrews, senior business manager for the firm, tells GlobeSt.com that the company selected the site because it offered a strong production component with a clean-room infrastructure that can handle the company's increasing operational needs.

"The space has a lot to offer," Andrews says of the building, formerly occupied by Zygo TeraOptix Inc. "Clean room facilities are essential for that business and the site was equipped with excellent clean-room facilities."

The firm plans to invest several million dollars to rehab the facility in the second quarter of 2006, he adds. RenaMed's current Lincoln headquarters, which was initially developed as a pilot manufacturing facility in 2001, will continue to operate as a manufacturing facility and development lab.

Andrews says the move, sparked by the firm's rapid growth, will bring the company closer to the Bay State's biotech core and put RenaMed just down the street from Genzyme, which it partnered with in September under a joint development and commercialization program. Under that agreement, RenaMed will be responsible for establishing the first US manufacturing facility on a Genzyme product to treat acute renal failure.

The Westborough relocation will also put RenaMed in the midst of Boston's suburban biotech boom and allow the firm to tap into the region's high-tech labor force, Andrews says.