A pharmaceutical startup in Santa Fe is receiving a boost from the state to execute local expansion plans.
The company, Contigo Compounding and Infusion Pharmacy, is building a new facility meant to act as a compounding pharmacy — one where medications are formulated or customized for specific patient needs. Contigo will invest $1.3 million for plumbing, electrical, retail space, patient treatment rooms and more. The new facility will open by the end of July, according to a release from the New Mexico Economic Development Department.
To help fund the project, the state is granting the company $150,000 in Local Economic Development Act money, used as a closing fund to grow existing New Mexico businesses and recruit others to the state. At Contigo, 22 full-time employees are expected to be hired over the next five years at an average salary of $65,000, according to the state. The firm also received $53,918 last month as part of the state's Job Training Incentive Program, meant to fund training for newly-created jobs in expanding or relocating businesses for as many as six months.
"These medications are highly specialized and very unique to the patients. If the doctors decide this is the best approach for the patients, we can now provide these services, like sterile compounding, right here in Albuquerque,” said Christopher Smith, co-owner of Contigo, in a statement. Compounding pharmacies can customize a medication's dosage or strength, flavor medications and reformulate drugs to remove certain ingredients, according to the American Pharmacists Association.
A search of the internet shows there are other compounding pharmacies in Albuquerque, but Contigo contends that it can produce "unique medications tailored to your needs that other pharmacies are unable to make." The company was founded this year, according to Smith, and hopes to capitalize on being up to date with the most recent standards.
The new standards put "different requirements on compounding sterile hazardous drugs, and there [are] not a lot of pharmacies that have done those improvements," he said.
The new facility is set, located at 8300 Carmel Ave., is set to open in July.
