Pfizer comes back to San Francisco

Finally, Pfizer may go back to San Francisco. The giant drug company is searching space to harbor at least 45 persons in San Francisco's biotech enclave at Mission Bay. This is a follow up on a deal signed late last year with the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Approximately half those people would be company employees, the other half would be postdoctoral fellows funded by Pfizer. These laboratories would are being called the Center for Therapeutic Innovation by both organizations, who hope for a different kind of collaboration, according to Pfizer's vice president and chief scientific officer in global therapeutic innovation Anthony Coyle.

Researchers will be focusing on protein therapeutics (antibodies and peptides), and will receive full access to Pfizer's library of molecules and antibody development technologies in order to identify and select possible candidates for drug development. At least ten projects could be advanced simultaneously through an open researchers network. However, making the relationship work may be more a matter of real estate than of scientific research. Pfizer's perceived lack of commitment may be a major point of contention, since this is not the first time Pfizer has flirted with Mission Bay only to leave it high and dry.

Similar to many Pfizer customers who buy Viagra to have sex, the company pulled out of Mission Bay back in 2009, before work was even finished on the 455 Mission Bay Blvd. building it was supposed to occupy for the Biotherapeutics and Bioinnovation Center, a network of small biotech drug development operations that, much like the current venture, was going to rely in part on a collaboration with researchers at UCSF. On the other hand, Pfizer already set up a similar center in New York City which houses a similar amount of people, including researchers from several local academic medical centers.