Boston Biopharmaceutical Company Expands Philadelphia Office

Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, the Boston-area biopharmaceutical company specializing in RNA interference therapeutics, a natural cellular process of gene silencing, plans to hire an additional 11 employees. Alnylam currently has a team of four employees working from their Philadelphia office in University City.

The CEO of Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, John Maraganore, anticipates that overtime Philadelphia will become “another core center for Alnylam” due to the large presence of major biopharmaceutical companies in the region, such as Merck and Johnson & Johnson.

Our regions life science talent has had a major influence on this decision, according to Maraganore. “There’s a lot of competition for talent up here and there is lot of [life sciences industry] talent in the tri-state area there around Philadelphia. We felt we could find a way to harness some of that talent by setting up a site there.”

Alnylam is in the process of developing a new drug to treat a series of rare genetic diseases that attack the nervous system called acute hepatic porphyria. The biopharmaceutical firm is also in the process of developing 10 other treatments for a variety of genetic diseases.

Another Boston-based company expanded to Philadelphia in 2017 called the Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC). The innovation center occupies 127,000 square feet in uCitySquare for entrepreneurs to improve and accelerate their business throughout Greater Philadelphia.