Pfizer (NYSE:
PFE) has announced the signing of a major lease in the new biotech-oriented Mission Bay area of San Francisco, where the company will soon house its Biotherapeutics and Bioinnovation Center (BBC), the company’s attempt to forge an entrepreneurial, biotech-like culture inside the framework of the big pharma. Instead of concentrating on in-house research, the BBC will seek to establish partnerships with academic, biomedical, biotech and venture capital communities outside the company.
Pfizer’s China R&D effort, now employing some 200 people, reports to the BBC, increasing the importance of the role China will play in Pfizer's future product development. Headed by Dr. Steven Yang, Pfizer’s China R&D unit is located in Shanghai’s Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park.
Last Tuesday, Dr. Yang interrupted his family vacation in the US to visit the Mission Bay site and meet with Dr. Corey Goodman, President of the BBC. He was given a tour by Leland "Skip" Whitney of GVA Kidder Matthews, the exclusive agent for Alexandria's Mission Bay properties. Greg Scott, our Executive Editor, was fortunate to be invited to join the meeting with Dr. Yang and to attend the ground breaking ceremonies.
The new research space is, appropriately enough, across the street from the UCSF Mission Bay campus. One of the BBC’s initiatives is to work with QB3, the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences, which is headquartered in Mission Bay. QB3 was established to forge closer ties between the academic expertise of three of California’s universities with biopharma businesses. In the QB3 agreement, Pfizer committed to underwrite up to $9.5 million in research at QB3 over three years. The money will establish a team at UCSF that will identify research areas of mutual interest. Pfizer will have first rights to negotiate for any IP developed by the QB3 researchers it underwrites.
Readers of
ChinaBio®Today may remember QB3 as a major supporter of Pacific Biopharma, the contract manufacturing organization that will build a 200,000 square foot facility in Taizhou to provide cost-effective small-batch manufacturing of biologic products.
Pfizer has signed a long-term lease for almost the entire five-story, 105,000-square-foot west wing of a new office/laboratory building in Mission Bay, being built by Alexandria Real Estate Equities. Pfizer holds an option for another 50,000 square feet in the east wing of the building. Construction, which is just getting under way, should be complete in 2010. Alexandria is also said to be developing a life science park in Tianjin.
Pfizer’s BBC unit will focus on discovering new medicines as well as securing new technologies and research tools that can be used across all of Pfizer’s therapeutic areas. As BBC’s head, Dr. Goodman brings entrepreneurial experience as the founder of two biotech companies, Exelixis and Renovis, and academic experience as a professor of biology at Stanford University for eight years and a professor of neurobiology and genetics at the University of California Berkley for 18 years.
Pfizer’s vaunted incubator, located in a 28,000 sq ft building on its La Jolla campus in San Diego, is another example of Pfizer’s novel attempt to link with early stage technology. Dr. Mark Benedyk, formerly of Ascenta Therapeutics in San Diego, was recently appointed Head of The Pfizer Incubator (TPI), which is said to be reporting to BBC as well.
Dr. Goodman’s broad experience base, and the global reach of BBC, including Dr. Yang’s unit in China and its incubator in San Diego, should support Pfizer’s stated commitment to seek innovative technologies from any area that may help it develop new drugs.
