The pharmaceutical industry is undergoing a transformation phase as it experiences unprecedented patent expirations and financial cut backs. At the same time, the industry is also moving away from blockbuster drugs towards more targeted therapies and biologics, Enrique Mirandes, Director for Life Science at the Puerto Rico Industrial Development Company of Puerto Rico (PRIDCO), told Outsourcing-Pharma.com.

"We have fallen victim to this situation," he said, explaining that solid dose manufacturing is one of the main areas to suffer.

Puerto Rico has over 60 solid dose manufacturing facilities, which is a large concentration, "so because of this we are experiencing an disproportional closure of manufacturing sites and resultant excess capacity," said Mirandes.

"At a rough guestimate, over the last couple of years the island has lost around 3,000 pharmaceutical manufacturing jobs. So far we have probably been able to offset 2,000 of these through new positions created in the biologic and medical device manufacturing arenas, which are both growing here, although we have to be ready for more plant closures in the near future," he said.

To try and move with the times, Mirandes said that Puerto Rico has been "aggressively targeting the biotech industry, and are heavily putting in the resources in order to try and attract new investment from this field... The government is working hard in conjunction with its life sciences industry and academia to boost the island's competitiveness in the biologics space."

For example, the University of Puerto Rico is investing over $465m to build the Molecular Sciences Building; the Comprehensive Cancer Research Centre (which is a joint initiative with the M.D. Anderson Cancer Centre in Houston); and the Bioprocess Development and Training Complex.

The latter will primarily serve start-up biotechs and academia, primarily in the US and Latin America, offering training and contract services to assist with R&D and a pilot plant to allow scale up of clinical trial materials.

Summing up the island's efforts towards its life sciences industry, Mirandes said: "It is not a sprint but a marathon… but at the end of it we will be left with a different workforce profile that has changed to move with the times."

Meanwhile, Puerto Rico's efforts in this field are starting to pay off. In the last five years four large biotech companies - Eli Lilly, Amgen, Abbott Biologics and Ortho Biologics - have all set up manufacturing operations here.

Beckton and Dickinson has also just inaugurated a new plant that will make monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) for reagents - a $53m investment for the firm.

In addition, despite the fact that Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) recently closed a solid dose facility on the island, it is investing in two new biologics sites, said Mirandes. The firm is spending $220m on creating a centre of excellence for the fill and finish of sterile parenterals, at a site in Manati, and $60m on a centre of excellence for high potency drugs.

Mirandes also indicated that an announcement was imminent regarding another new site investment planned by a large pharmaceutical company, although he could not elaborate on any details at this stage.

Furthermore, in April Amgen revealed it was intending to expand its commercial and clinical production capacity of recombinant erythropoietic factors at its site there. However, in August, these expansion plans were thrown into doubt, when the company revealed it was planning to slash 12-14 per cent of its workforce to offset the recent difficulties it has been facing with the sales of its anaemia blockbusters, resulting in a "re-scoping" of its Ireland manufacturing operations and revisions of its Puerto Rico plans.

Despite the air of uncertainty, Mirandes said that to his knowledge, most of Amgen's planned $1bn investment in Puerto Rico is still going ahead, with the exception of one building.

"It is my understanding that following the cancellation in Ireland, Puerto Rico has become more important in terms of the company's plans."