Following General Electric's decision to relocate to Boston earlier this year, GE Healthcare's Life Sciences division has decided to set up shop in the Bay State too — in a just-opened $27 million, 210,000 square-foot facility in Marlborough, Massachusetts.

The Marlborough facility, just a half hour's drive from Boston, is expected to employ over 500 scientists and professionals by 2017. In its new home, GE Healthcare Life Sciences will focus on advancing the field of precision medicine.

Specifically, it will focus on manufacturing technologies for cell and immune therapies, early-stage research tools to develop precision technologies, and consumables for manufacturing vaccines, insulin and biologics.

It will also house 40,000 square feet of laboratories that will be used for cell and immune therapy research and development, early-stage drug development, biomanufacturing and scientific and medical affair support.

The life sciences business, which also markets contrast agents and PET agents for medical imaging, is the fastest-growing part of GE Healthcare, accounting for $4 billion of the division’s $18 billion in annual sales, according to the Boston Globe.

“We want to be a big player in precision medicine,” said Kieran Murphy, president of GE Healthcare's Life Sciences business, according to the Globe. “We’re investing heavily in the cell therapy space because that’s the next era in medicine. We want this to be a $1 billion business,” up from current sales of less than $100 million a year.

"General Electric's ongoing investment in Massachusetts is just the latest proof that the commonwealth is a global leader in life science innovation, from discovery to manufacturing and commercialization," Charlie Baker, Governor of Massachusetts, said in a statement. "With a deep bench of talent and supportive economic environment, we are excited to have GE Healthcare be a part of Central Massachusetts' growing workforce and look forward to the advances that will benefit the health and well-being of our citizens."

Another reason for the move, the Worcester Business Journal Online reported, was to establish the life science business in closer proximity to Xcellerex, a Marlborough-based biopharmaceutical company GE acquired in 2012.

By the end of this year, GE will have almost 5,000 employees in Massachusetts and Murphy said it would not be surprising if the new facility itself had over 1,000 employees within the next five to six years.

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