Pfizer is gobbling up some prime biotech real estate in Cambridge, MA. The New York-based pharma company (NYSE: [[ticker:PFE]]) is adding space for 400 employees at the heart of the biotech R&D hub in Kendall Square.
The world’s largest drug company—which greatly increased its Boston presence a couple years ago through the $68 billion acquisition of Wyeth—said today it has signed a 10-year lease with MIT for more than 180,000 square feet in a new building under construction at 610 Main Street South. The building will house Pfizer’s cardiovascular, metabolic, and endocrine disease unit as well as its neuroscience research unit. The company said it plans to move into the new building when it’s done in the fourth quarter of 2013.
Pfizer’s growth in Boston was certainly not a given, since February when CEO Ian Read announced deep cuts to the company’s $8 billion global R&D operations. Research sites in Groton, CT, and Sandwich, UK, have been hit the hardest. Pfizer, in today’s statement, said it plans to relocate some key company scientists to the new Kendall Square facility, as well as hire “a significant number” of new scientists with expertise in chemistry and biology.
“This agreement is good for the growing innovation hub in Kendall Square, good for Cambridge and good for MIT,” said MIT President Susan Hockfield in a statement.
