St. Jude Medical Inc. (NYSE:STJ) plans to more than double its Plymouth, Minn. presence with a 3 floor, 275,000 square foot addition to its 5050 Nathan lane building.
Along with the build, the medical device giant plans to consolidate its cardiovascular unit to the new Plymouth campus. The company’s cardiovascular division currently leases locations in Minnetonka, Minn. and Maple Grove, Minn.
"Because many of the future growth opportunities for St. Jude Medical are expected to arise from devices in the cardiovascular division, we’re excited to develop a Plymouth campus that will not only help streamline operations and business activities, but also bring employees together under one roof," Frank Callaghan, president of the St. Jude Medical cardiovascular, division said in prepared remarks.
Sign up to get our free newsletters delivered straight to your inbox
The company made no mention of lay-offs because of the Minnetonka/Maple Grove consolidation and said that it expects to start construction on the Plymouth location as early as February 2012.
The current Plymouth location served as the former headquarters of AGA Medical, which St. Jude acquired in 2010 for $1.03 billion.
The price tag also landed the St. Paul-based medical device maker AGA Medical’s Amplatzer technology, a catheter-based treatment designed to close the patent foramen ovale, a congenital defect that leaves an opening in the atrial septum separating the upper 2 chambers of the heart.
Shares of St. Jude Medical got a boost on Wall Street this week after the company announced that it met a stopping rule in the Respect clinical trial of its Amplatzer structural heart defect treatment.
That means the study’s fulfilled the number of primary events to meet its protocol requirements, which in turn means St. Jude can close patient enrollment in the trial.
The 980-patient Respect trial is examining whether the Amplatzer can prevent "cryptogenic" stroke – strokes whose cause is unknown – in patients with PFO.
The condition is believed to play a role in such mysterious strokes, but linking a treatment with preventing stroke and ischemia has proven elusive for at least one other company.