Image courtesy of Related Beal

Vertex Pharmaceuticals will occupy a new life science building at 22 Drydock Ave. in South Boston, bringing its commercial footprint in the neighborhood to 1.9 million square feet.

In the latest expansion, Vertex will occupy 344,000 square feet in the second phase of a life science campus on Drydock Avenue to be developed by Related Beal, Kavanagh Advisory Group and the Boston Real Estate Inclusion Fund.

The pharma giant is expanding next door to its Innovation Square labs on Drydock Avenue, forming a new complex that will be known as the Leiden Campus. The first phase of the project was dedicated today.

“These buildings represent a further significant investment in our unique R&D strategy, to transform the lives of people with serious diseases, like sickle cell disease and type 1 diabetes, using cutting-edge genetic and cell-based therapies,” Vertex Executive Chairman Jeffrey Leiden said in a statement.

To be developed on a parcel owned by the Economic Development and Industrial Corp. of Boston, the project will include a lab for Boston residents to earn certificates as lab technicians and biomanufacturing specialists, Vertex announced today.

In April, the Boston Planning & Development Agency approved the development team’s proposal for the Drydock Avenue property from a field of three applicants. The proposal offered $131 million for the 70-year ground lease.

Vertex became the first major life science company to expand in the Seaport District in 2015, when it relocated from Cambridge to a new headquarters on the Fan Pier. It expanded into the Raymond L. Flynn Marine Park in the eastern side of the neighborhood as an anchor for the second phase of Related Beal’s Innovation Square campus at 6 Tide St., leasing 269,000 square feet in January 2020.

The latest project will demolish a small office building on the 1.8-acre site to make room for a seven-story, 337,516-square-foot office-lab building. The project would include a job training center for the Gloucester Marine Genomics Institute, according to the proposal.

Related Beal is attracting early-stage biotech companies to another nearby property, the Innovation and Design Building on Drydock Avenue. In partnership with Jamestown, owners are adding lab infrastructure to the massive former Army complex and have secured 260,000 square feet in leases from nine life science companies.