April 14, 2016
By Mark Terry, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
Despite the Pfizer acquisition of Allergan falling apart, business continues. Pfizer hopes to build a 5-story manufacturing facility in Andover, Mass. and is trying to pull in $2.9 million of tax breaks from the city.
The 175,000-square-foot facility would cost about $200 million and create 150 jobs, half of which would be contracted employees. The Andover Board of Selectmen, Planning Board and Finance Committee have all recommended the five-year Tax-Increment Financing plan.
“We give up taxes in the short run, but in the long run there is a financial benefit,” said Joanne Marden, a FinCom member, to the Andover Townsman.
Pfizer has indicated that Andover is one of three possible locations for the facility. The other two are in Grange Castle, Ireland and Chesterfield, Mo. Apparent factors, besides the tax incentives, include qualified labor and materials, constructions costs, and operational costs like property taxes, utilities and labor.
It’s also been pointed out that Pfizer has a lot of activity in the Cambridge, Mass. area, which opened an experimental research center there in June 2014. In addition to its facility at 610 Main Street in Cambridge, it has an adjoining research building, dubbed 610 North, that is expected to open early next year.
610 North is expected to host Pfizer researchers, but also be a collaboration space for independent biotech startups, similar to the nearby Lab Central incubator.
“It will have a leading impact on our portfolio when it comes to innovation,” said Mikael Dolsten, president of Pfizer’s worldwide research and development, to the Boston Globe. “We are very optimistic about what the Cambridge group will be doing. And Cambridge will be one-stop shopping for biotech companies and academic scientists who want to engage with us.”
Cambridge is Pfizer’s second-largest research site. Its primary research location is in Groton, Conn. The two major biotech research hubs in the U.S. are Cambridge, Mass. and the San Francisco Bay Area.
The company’s new research centers are also focusing on open architecture and, according to the Boston Globe, “a hipper culture more akin to Kendall Square’s entrepreneurial startups than the closed-door research at Pfizer’s traditional campuses.” This also includes the building of a laboratory with black walls dubiously called the “pink flamingo lounge.”
“We intentionally didn’t want to be in some large remote campus behind a security fence,” said Michael Ehlers, the senior vice president for biotherapeutics research for Pfizer who is the site head for the Cambridge research center, to the Boston Globe.
Of course, location and open design is all well and good, but it needs to generate marketable science and revenue. Pfizer is a company with a great history, but now that its deal with Allergan is history, investors are interested in what’s next. One possibility is the company will break into multiple companies. The original plan after the $160 billion Pfizer-Allergan merger was to break the merged companies into one focused on research and development and new drugs, and the other to focus on mature branded products and drugs facing patent expiration. That’s still a possibility.
Others are interested in the possibility of Pfizer buying up companies, big or small. One possibility on the big side would be Shire plc , which would bolster Pfizer’s rare-disease pipeline. In theory GlaxoSmithKline or AstraZeneca could be targets, although unlikely ones due to the UK government’s opposition to such deals. Valeant Pharmaceuticals International would be interesting, although buying it up in pieces would be more likely. Valeant is already talking about selling off its Bausch & Lomb unit. Other companies floated include Cambridge, Mass.-based Biogen , North Chicago, Ill.-based AbbVie , Celgene or even Bristol-Myers Squibb .
