Pfizer to hire more than 450 workers at Terre Haute inhalable insulin plant

TERRE HAUTE -- Pfizer Inc., the world's largest drugmaker, plans to hire more than 450 workers and invest $170 million at a western Indiana plant where it manufactures the nation's first inhalable version of insulin.\nPfizer said Wednesday it will hire the workers over the next two to three years, boosting to about 650 the number of employees at its Exubera inhaler production line. It also plans to invest $170 million at the 120,000-square-foot Terre Haute plant by 2009.\nNew York-based Pfizer received federal approval in late January to market the Exubera inhaler for controlling Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes in adults. The device offers the first new way of delivering insulin since the discovery of the hormone in the 1920s.\nSome stock analysts predict Exubera will be popular, with annual sales topping $1 billion within three years. The inhaler would allow millions of adult diabetics an alternative to some of the injections they now endure.\nAlthough Exubera sales will not start until midsummer, production began at the plant soon after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the company's marketing plans.\nThe inhaler, about the size of an eyeglass case, produces a cloud of insulin powder in its chamber that passes rapidly into the bloodstream to regulate blood-sugar levels when inhaled.\nJeff Kindler, Pfizer's vice chairman, said nearly 21 million Americans -- including more than 350,000 Indiana residents -- suffer from diabetes and its many complications.\n"Among all our hopes is that Exubera will encourage those who are reluctant to seek treatment for diabetes to come forward and take better care of their health," Kindler said.\nGov. Mitch Daniels said Pfizer's hiring plans are another sign Indiana is making progress attracting life sciences-related industries -- and their high-paying jobs -- to the state.\n"Pfizer's decision to manufacture their newest product here is hard proof of our progress," he said.\nPfizer has invested about $160 million in its Terre Haute plant since construction began on the complex in 1999.\nState and local governments have approved $18.4 million in economic incentives for Pfizer to hire the new workers at its Exubera plant, which is located at a 2,000-acre site the company opened in 1948.\nThe plant currently employs about 350 people, 200 of whom work on the Exubera production line. Pfizer also manufactures antibiotics in a separate building at the site.\nTo manufacture the Exubera inhaler, workers take the original, crystalline form of insulin and use specialized equipment to turn it into a dry powdered form that is then packaged in precisely measured amounts for the inhaler.