SANFORD, N.C. — Pfizer executives on Wednesday said a new gene therapy facility will give the company’s Sanford facility unique production capabilities.

• The new facility will add 300 jobs at Pfizer’s Sanford facility
• The gene therapies developed there will target rare diseases
• The facility will be completed in 2021 and be fully operational sometime in 2022

Company leaders on Wednesday morning announced they would invest an additional $500 million in the facility, slated to open on the Sanford campus at the end of 2021. They expect the facility to add roughly 300 new jobs.

Director of Gene Therapy Operations Jeff Brown said the gene therapy treatments the facility will develop represent the next frontier in medicine. Unlike other forms of treatment, Brown said gene therapy targets the source of a disorder such as hemophilia or Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.

“It’s very transformative. We’re going to the source of what patients are dealing with every day,” he said.

Pfizer Biopharmaceuticals Group President Angela Hwang said the facility will focus on developing treatments for rare diseases. According to the National Library of Medicine, a rare disease is defined as a disease that affects fewer than 200,000 people in the United States. There are nearly 7,000 such diseases and Hwang said about 3,000 of them can be traced to a single error in a person’s genetic code. Pfizer Global Supply’s Pam Siwik said researchers at the facility will start by developing treatments for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy and hemophilia.