Geraldine Vettrhoeffer, site director, speaks at GlaxoSmithKline's "inauguration" of its Marietta facility.
Six years ago, the events of Wednesday morning were impossible to foresee.
Wyeth Pharmaceuticals had closed its Marietta campus, idling the final 440 workers at the once-bustling site.
The chances of the idle vaccine-making facility ever getting revived seemed slim to none, given the cost and complexity of the task.
But Wednesday morning, about 300 people gathered there to celebrate the achievement of that very feat by GlaxoSmithKline.
Indeed, it was expensive, time-consuming and hard.
GSK has spent five years and $375 million on revitalizing the site, where more than 300 people now work, up from 180 a year ago.
"Many people outside the GSK vaccines organization probably don't know, but we've been busy — very busy," said Patrick Florent, a GSK senior vice president.
Florent said GSK employees "haven't had the time to step back and look at what we have done so far since we purchased the site in 2005. The celebration is long overdue."
He and other GSK executives spent 90 minutes in an "inauguration" of the site, recapping GSK's progress there and thanking employees as well as local officials, vendors and contractors.
VIDEO: Florent speaks at GSK's "inauguration"
The GSK executive who originated the idea of turning the vacant Marietta site into its "hub" for U.S. vaccine production, Florent emphasized that the workers are fulfilling key roles.
Not only are they making a crucial GSK facility successful, they are packaging and manufacturing vaccines preventing millions of deaths and illnesses worldwide, he said.
The Marietta campus officially began operating as a GSK site last summer.
That milestone took years of extensive, detailed preparation — new and renovated structures, new equipment, and arduous testing and approval processes.
The first operational task at the state-of-the-art facility was packaging Engerix-B hepatitis B vaccine, site director Geraldine Vetterhoeffer said.
It's now one of five vaccines being packaged there.
The others are Havrix (for hepatitis A), Infanrix and Pediarix (both for DPT, or diphtheria, pertussis — whooping cough — and tetanus), and Hiberix (for Haemophilus influenzae type b, or Hib).
Vetterhoeffer expects that eventually the site will package "virtually all" 13 GSK vaccines approved for the U.S.
The Marietta campus began manufacturing last fall when, responding to the flu pandemic, it started making H1N1 vaccine adjuvants.
(Adjuvants increase a person's immune response to a vaccine.)
The site quickly produced millions of doses for Europe, Canada and elsewhere outside the U.S.
That was much sooner than GSK had figured the site would be doing that job, she said.
"It was something we had in our business plan, but not this fast," said Vetterhoeffer, praising employees and contractors for reacting with "passion" to the call for swift action.
More action awaits.
Pending FDA approval, the Marietta campus could begin to fill vials of seasonal flu vaccine and package them as soon as 2011.
Subject to FDA approval, the site also could begin to package GSK's meningitis vaccine, MenHibrix.
That could lead to eventual filling and freeze-drying of the product there, GSK spokeswoman Sarah Alspach said.
Vetterhoeffer said the additional work would lead to more jobs and investment, but she said it was too early to predict the extent of those impacts.