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While Massachusetts still holds its rank as the largest life sciences hub in the nation, North Carolina continues to sharpen its competitive edge by luring companies away.
Immunovia, a Swedish diagnostic company, announced Monday it plans to move its U.S. headquarters out of Massachusetts to North Carolina's Research Triangle Park to cut down on costs.
The company is moving out of Lake Williams Center at 26 Forest St. in Marlborough, a suburb about 30 miles from Boston.
“Research Triangle Park offers access to top talent at a reasonable cost,” Immunovia CEO Jeff Borcherding said in a statement. "Moving to a smaller lab in RTP is a key aspect of our ongoing efforts to be a leaner, more efficient company."
The new office will be significantly smaller than its current headquarters to reflect the company's size, which was impacted last year by layoffs. The company didn't announce how much space it plans to occupy or at what address, but it said it plans to make the move next month.
The company signed a lease in 2017 to move its U.S. headquarters to Marlborough, taking up almost 9K SF at the 90K SF office building. The Lake Williams Center is a 210K SF office park that consists of two buildings at 62 and 26 Forest St.
Landlord Redgate Capital Advisors bought the property in 2023 for $14M from National Development.
North Carolina has been growing its biotech cluster in recent years, aggressively competing for tenants and developers. The state has already seen massive developments take shape, such as King Street Properties' 1M SF Pathway Triangle biomanufacturing campus.
For developers and companies alike, North Carolina has emerged as a cheaper alternative close to elite universities and a massive manufacturing workforce eager to get started, the Boston Globe reported in February.
The threat of companies moving down south has been top of mind for Massachusetts leaders, and there has been a significant push to keep life sciences companies and attract new ones.
"I was just in North Carolina in the fall and they were very explicit," Massachusetts' Secretary of Economic Development Yvonne Hao said at Bisnow's life sciences conference in March. "Their goal is to take the title from us."
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