The former Athenex plant on Route 5 in Dunkirk, currently leased by ImmunityBio, sits idle now. Photo by M.J. Stafford

There is no longer any sign of Athenex on Route 5 in the town of Dunkirk.

The building erected for the company in 2016 with $200 million in state money stands mute. The Athenex branding once visible on Route 5, on entrance signs and in the lobby, was quietly removed over the winter.

Desperate for funds, the pharmaceutical company sold its interest in the property to ImmunityBio in early 2022.

With the news that Athenex has filed for bankruptcy, it’s clear that didn’t work out for anyone.

ImmunityBio has little current interest in using the plant. The company has stated the building needs 12 to 18 months’ worth of work to meet its manufacturing needs. It wound up laying off most of its employees in Dunkirk, about 40 people, in September.

Also, the company is bleeding money. Biopharmaceutical startups are notoriously expensive, often with little to show for it initially. However, ImmunityBio might be an extreme case of that.

Its 2022 financial report shows $244,000 in revenue against $351,538,000 in operating expenses. Research and development alone cost $248,149,000. Tack on $65,988,000 in other costs, mostly from interest payments, and the company was a whopping $417,320,000 in the red for 2022.

The company acknowledged in its report that it needs more revenue but asserted it has enough cash on hand to get through 2023.

Meanwhile, the cash infusion Athenex got from selling its Dunkirk plant to ImmunityBio did nothing to improve its ebbing fortunes.

The company was in deep trouble ever since a March 2021 decision by the Food and Drug Administration. Athenex was banking heavily on a new breast cancer drug — but the FDA rejected the drug due to irregularities in late-stage clinical trials.

Athenex stock, once as high as $70 a share, dropped below $1 a share and stayed there. In fact, the New York Stock Exchange twice threatened to delist Athenex, basically because their stock was not worth enough for stockbrokers to bother with.

The company declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy May 14. Athenex CEO Johnson Lau blamed the bankruptcy on the cancer drug woes and a lack of cash flow.

The announcement last month marked a 180-degree turn from the hope and enthusiasm Athenex brought to this area in the mid-2010s.

When then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo came to Dunkirk on Feb. 11, 2016, to announce a $200 million economic incentive for the project, officials anticipated it would bring 900 jobs to the area.

That never came close to happening.

The 409,000-square-foot plant took nearly four years to complete — finishing touches to thr lobby were getting made as the COVID-19 pandemic raged in June 2020. Dunkirk Mayor Wilfred Rosas later said the pandemic caused delays in construction.

In January 2021, Chautauqua County Industrial Development Agency CEO Mark Geise said “the plant is essentially done, there’s just a couple other things to address.” He also noted, “it takes a long time for certifications and approvals” of the drugs, such as the breast cancer treatment Athenex sought to make in Dunkirk.

However, the crushing news that its drug trials were rejected came only a couple months later.

One person who knew the building well criticized it.

“The building was falling apart,” wrote one former employee in an August 2022 email to the OBSERVER. “From what I heard they didn’t let the foundation set for the allotted time and began building on it. … Floors and tile were buckling.”

The parking lot at the plant sat empty on a recent visit to the property, except for a security guard’s pickup truck. The main entrance was gated off.