Today, the Commonwealth celebrated Glenn Youngkin’s announcement that Virginia has been ranked “America’s Top State for Business” by CNBC. The annual ranking measures all 50 states on 128 different metrics in 10 key categories of competitiveness.
Governor Youngkin and Secretary Caren Merrick shared this breaking news alongside many of our founding members of the Alliance for Building Better Medicine at a special event hosted at Phlow’s new Metric Ton-Scale cGMP facility in the City of Petersburg, VA.
Also included in today's event, Eric Edwards, MD, PhD and Dr. Frank Gupton shared how Phlow set out four years ago to re-imagine and re-shore domestic production of critical ingredients and finished drug products needed to sustain life and conquer disease. With their partners, Civica Rx, VCU’s Medicines for All Institute, and AMPAC Fine Chemicals, Phlow chose Petersburg to build its state-of-the-art infrastructure to create a reliable supply of safe, high-quality, and affordable medicines for all.
At warp speed, public and private stakeholders have worked together to build next-generation facilities in Petersburg, as well as in Richmond, capable of creating domestic supply chain resiliency and reliability for life-changing medicines. The shared successes and milestones achieved in the region have since led to other leaders in life sciences and pharmaceutical manufacturing seeking out Richmond-Petersburg to expand their own facilities.
In celebration of the bold thinking and tenacity of the industry leaders building better medicine in Petersburg, Governor Youngkin, Secretary Merrick, and Mayor Samuel Parham, with the help of students from Virginia State University, unveiled a new brand for the area – called Campus for Advanced Manufacturing of Pharmaceuticals in the United States (CAMPUS). The unveiling of the new CAMPUS brand is a way to honor the thriving ecosystem that has emerged in Petersburg and to give it an official name as Petersburg continues to attract other pharmaceutical leaders to our region.
