Preview: 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. “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. Read the full story in the July 9 issue of the San Fernando Valley Business Journal.