Chalk up another addition to the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus.

OncoMed Pharmaceuticals of Great Neck will occupy 4,500 square feet at the Campus’ Innovation Center come September, and it will bring new jobs with it. The company provides bio-oncology pharmaceutical care management and pharmacy services.

“Our new facility in Buffalo will enable OncoMed to join a nationally recognized center of excellence in oncology and molecular sciences, and to take advantage of a highly skilled workforce,” said Burt Zweigenhaft, chief executive officer at OncoMed, in a news release.

Initially, the company will hire 12 pharmacists and administrative workers, growing to a staff of 45 by year’s end. After two years, the company plans to employ more than 100 people.

OncoMed will compound cancer drugs at the Innovation Center on Ellicott Street and deliver them to health care providers and hospitals in the region. Its business model is to bring down the cost of dispensing cancer medications, and to simplify what has become an extremely complicated administrative process.

The site, which is being built, will include negative and positive pressure clean rooms as well as a processing center where medications will be screened and packaged.

“The connection to the UB School of Pharmacy is key,” said Patrick Whalen, chief operations officer at the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. “It’s an interesting success story on its own.”

Even while negotiating its lease for office and lab space at the Innovation Center, OncoMed was planning to open a separate call center in Long Island staffed by licensed pharmacists. After visiting the city, it “fell in love with Buffalo,” he said, and decided to relocate that operation here as a more cost-effective operation as well as to capitalize on its proximity to the University at Buffalo School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences.

The company will also work with the school to develop and support an oncology pharmacy training program and resident program for oncology pharmacy students.

The Innovation Center is at 640 Ellicott St., in the four-story section of the former Trico complex. The $25 million project to purchase and overhaul the former factory has been building out space as it is leased. With 82 percent occupancy, the first floor and most of the second floors are filled, with the third and fourth floors being built out to suit the needs of companies that lease them.

The Innovation Center is a mix of lab and office space for life science and biotech companies situated in Buffalo’s emerging medical corridor, which encompasses Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo General Hospital, Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute and other life sciences and health-related companies.

“The building is filling up even quicker than we thought and we were optimistic,” said Whalen. “It seems the more tenants we have, the more visitors we get, the more people talk about the building. It’s starting to be quite the buzz in the biomedical sector.”

schristmann@buffnnews.comnull