One of the biggest projects that Pas­cal So­ri­ot ini­ti­at­ed, all the way back in 2013, af­ter he first took over as As­traZeneca’s CEO is fi­nal­ly com­plete.

Su­san Gal­braith

As­traZeneca is for­mal­ly un­veil­ing its $1.34 bil­lion (£1 bil­lion) R&D cam­pus in Cam­bridge, UK, a shiny new fa­cil­i­ty span­ning 19,000 square me­ters in the south­ern part of the city. On top of 2,200 re­search sci­en­tists, it will al­so host a suite of ro­bot­ics, high-through­put screen­ing and AI-dri­ven tech­nol­o­gy.

“I think it’s a very bold state­ment that we’ve got the new build­ing,” Su­san Gal­braith, EVP of on­col­o­gy R&D, said in a video, “be­cause it’s ba­si­cal­ly say­ing that R&D is the fu­ture of the com­pa­ny, and that we want to in­vest in hav­ing the best fa­cil­i­ties pos­si­ble for peo­ple to do in­no­v­a­tive sci­ence. So that it­self I think is a state­ment of in­tent for what we want the fu­ture of the com­pa­ny to be.”

From pre­ci­sion med­i­cines to next-gen treat­ments such as nu­cleotide-based, gene-edit­ing and cell ther­a­pies, the com­pa­ny has high hopes for the site, which it’s call­ing the Dis­cov­ery Cen­tre (DISC).

When As­traZeneca first an­nounced plans to build the new glob­al R&D hub and cor­po­rate head­quar­ters, the goal was to be ready for move-in by 2016 on a bud­get of $500 mil­lion. So­ri­ot’s vi­sion was for the team to be­come an in­te­gral part of the lo­cal ecosys­tem in Cam­bridge, “a world-renowned bio­science hotspot that ri­vals the likes of San Fran­cis­co and Boston.”

In the end, it was just like de­vel­op­ing a new drug. Fraught with high costs, dis­ap­point­ing set­backs and the source of bit­ter crit­i­cism.

Andy Williams

But the de­lays didn’t stop As­traZeneca from ink­ing over 200 col­lab­o­ra­tions in the re­gion, in­clud­ing 130-plus with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge, on top of more than 2,000 around the world, ac­cord­ing to Andy Williams, VP of Cam­bridge pro­gram and strat­e­gy. And the open-floor de­sign of the new build­ing will hope­ful­ly deep­en these ties while fos­ter­ing more.

The grand open­ing on Tues­day fea­tures Prince Charles as the guest of hon­or.

Lo­cat­ed with­in the Cam­bridge Bio­med­ical Cam­pus, As­traZeneca is now neigh­bors with mul­ti­ple re­search hos­pi­tals as well as Ab­cam, the re­search tool provider.

Amgen is the latest pharma company to appear on the radar of Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-OR), who is investigating the way pharma companies are using subsidiaries in low- or zero-tax countries to lower their tax bills.

Like its peers Merck, AbbVie and Bristol Myers Squibb, Wyden notes how Amgen uses its Puerto Rico operations to consistently pay tax rates that are substantially lower than the U.S. corporate tax rate of 21%, with an effective tax rate of 10.7% in 2020 and 12.1% in 2021.

After controversially spinning out its talc liabilities and filing for bankruptcy in an attempt to settle 38,000 lawsuits, Johnson & Johnson is now changing up the formula for its baby powder products.

J&J is beginning the transition to an all cornstarch-based baby powder portfolio, the pharma giant announced on Thursday — just months after a federal judge ruled in favor of its “Texas two-step” bankruptcy to settle allegations that its talc products contained asbestos and caused cancer. An appeals court has since agreed to revisit that case.