Conejo’s Biotech Cluster

Atara Biotherapeutics Inc. isn’t new to the neighborhood, but the firm’s just-opened manufacturing facilities in Thousand Oaks’ Conejo Spectrum Business Park make its local presence 91,000 square feet bigger. Chief Executive Dr. Isaac Ciechanover cut the ribbon at a June 25 ceremony. “This is by far the largest facility in our network, including our contract manufacturers and partners,” Joe Newell, executive vice president and chief technical operations officer at Atara, said. Atara, a spinoff of Thousand Oaks-based pharmaceutical firm Amgen Inc., is “co-located by design” in South San Francisco but has had offices at 4360 Park Terrace Drive in Westlake Village since it was founded in 2012. The new facilities, which were unveiled on June 25, will be the primary plant where the company manufactures immune cells that target cancers and other illnesses linked to the Epstein-Barr virus. Called Atara T-Cell Operations and Manufacturing, or ATOM, the space affords the burgeoning company plenty of room to grow. “Our biggest growth area is Southern California,” said Steve Bertram, senior vice president of global human resources at Atara. The company plans to hire highly skilled workers to staff the facility, which is slated to begin production operations in early 2019. Amgen factor Atara’s Southern California roots begin with Amgen, which partnered with Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers – a Sand Hill Road venture capital firm that has backed companies the likes of Alphabet Inc., Amazon.com and Twitter Inc. – to set up Atara in 2012. Six of the molecules that make up Atara’s products were licensed from Amgen; in keeping with a non-contractual request from the company, Atara agreed to retain a presence in the Conejo Valley for at least two years. “That turned into a bit of a strategy for us … we’d maintain the San Francisco headquarters but have a strong Southern California presence,” Bertram said. “That way we’d be able to leverage both areas.” Atara began building out its Westlake Village offices pretty quickly, first adding to its research and development team and then its technical operations group, Bertram said. The location now employs 65 people. When its board approved building ATOM, Atara considered moving outside of California as well as other locations along the coast of the state. “The question became, ‘Where’s the best place to put this facility?’” Bertram said. Atara chose to remain in the region based on five factors: Proximity, talent, space, support from the local business community and support from the city of Thousand Oaks. “There’s a lot of talent right here in the Thousand Oaks area for what we need,” Bertram said. The company estimates that roughly 50 percent of its current staff comes from local universities, including USC, California Lutheran University, California State University – Northridge and California State University – Channel Islands. Most employees have had some post-graduate experience at other biotechnology firms before coming to the company, such as stints at Gilead Science’s Kite Pharma in Los Angeles or at Shire Pharmaceuticals, a Dublin-based company that has local facilities in Glendale. Thousand Oaks’ local economy stands to benefit greatly from Atara’s expanded presence, City Manager Andrew Powers said. The company already plans to add 100 employees at its new facilities, and will likely add more as it grows. “From a broader economic landscape standpoint, this is such a wonderful addition to our portfolio,” Powers said. “For years we’ve always had Amgen as the major player in town. … This provides another footprint in a new and growing area in the biotech space that will broaden the job opportunities locally and have an overall benefit to our local economy.” Not enough space Finding the right plot of land to build the facility was crucial for Atara, Newell said. The lot where ATOM stands was previously a green field, allowing the company to build the plant to its specifications rather than having to change an existing structure to meet its needs. “This gave us the extreme flexibility to design exactly what we needed,” Newell said. “It’s extremely expensive to retrofit buildings for other processes.” Atara is leasing the property from Sares-Regis Group in Irvine, which purchased the Conejo Spectrum Business Park last year and intends to develop eight other industrial buildings aimed at technology and life sciences firms. Atara will pay $74,422 a month for the first year, according to federal filings, with the per-month amount rising annually. The terms of its lease include an option to renew for 10 years and then for nine years after that. The manufacturing takes place on the floor of the building, which is lined with laboratories and high-tech rooms for culturing cells. Above the space is a 23,000-square-foot mezzanine level with enough office space for 160 employees. But even with all that room, the company will keep its Westlake Village offices for the time being, Bertram said. At the end of the first quarter, ATOM had 206 staff members companywide, with 70 percent of them located in Southern California. With a growth rate that stands at 6 percent and is accelerating, there simply is not enough room at the new space to hold them all. “We had hoped to consolidate all of our staff into the ATOM facility, but our staff numbers have grown beyond what ATOM is able to accommodate,” Bertram said. To that end, the company is actively looking for additional space for the team members remaining at Westlake Village, as well as those who will come on board in the future, closer to the ATOM facility so that all of Atara’s SoCal staff is within walking distance of one another, he said. Scaling up While the headcount growth might require adding more new facilities, ATOM is designed to handle higher demand for Atara’s product pipeline once it begins bringing its treatments to market. Like other biotechnology firms whose products are in the pre-market stages of drug development, Atara has not generated revenue since its inception. Still, it is confident that the novelty and utility of its treatments will make having the option to scale up production quickly a worthwhile investment. “This opportunity allowed us the great fortune of designing the building so that it suits our exact needs today, as well as build in an enormous amount of flexibility for what we will need in the future,” Newell said. That flexibility also includes room for increasing processes and capacity, meaning that the company will be able to add both equipment for manufacturing new products as well as scale up its existing production, Newell explained. Atara plans to file an application with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in early 2019 to market its main product Tab-cel, a treatment for patients with a devastating condition called Epstein-Barr virus-associated post-transplant lymphoproliferative disorder that occurs in patients undergoing stem cell or solid organ transplants. If the FDA approves Tab-cel, the facilities will be used for commercial production, Newell explained. It will also be used to build other products in the company’s pipeline – including a treatment for multiple sclerosis – which are in varying stages of clinical development. “This facility will support not only clinical production for materials for other products, but also commercial manufacturing,” Newell said. “That speaks to the flexibility this facility will provide (our) portfolio.” Atara’s expanded presence could also signal the start of a growth spurt for the biotechnology hub in Thousand Oaks. The city has already been contacted by another life science company that is interested in relocating to the Conejo Spectrum Business Park, Thousand Oaks Economic Development Manager Haider Alawami said. “We are excited about Atara and the future,” he said.