Booming Nektar Therapeutics (CA) Grabs More Mission Bay Space; May Hire Another 150 Staffers
January 20, 2015
By Riley McDermid, BioSpace.com Breaking News Sr. Editor
Bay Area biotech Nektar Therapeutics Inc. is booming and will hire as many as 150 new people as it expands into a new 20,000-square-foot facility in San Francisco's Mission Bay, the company told the San Francisco Business Times late Tuesday.
Nektar currently has a staff of 425, with 250 already based in its existing Mission Bay space, but it’s hoping it will be adding to that roster after receiving U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for promising new drugs. The space at 455 Mission Bay Blvd. South will be a second story connected to the company’s current headquarters, where it conducts the majority of its research and development operations.
The company (and a few Wall Street analysts) have been waiting anxiously for the outcome of a Phase III trial of its metastatic breast cancer drug, NKTR-102, which is currently being tested and could have results as soon as March. If those are positive, it means the experimental therapy could be useful for other forms of brain and lung cancer, as well as the always lucrative tumor market.
"If 102 is successful and you go into oncology, you have to have medical, regulatory and sales and marketing," CEO Howard Robin told the paper, adding the company will hire “at least 50” new workers.
So far, 2015 is shaping up to be a big year for the company. Nektar is also waiting on FDA approval—and the milestone payments that come with those—for the hemophilia A treatment it has developed with Baxter International.
"You could say, Nektar has matured," Robin said in the interview. "It has become an adult."
Nektar’s additional space will be leased from Alexandria Real Estate Equities Inc., which had previously been in talks with Pfizer for a facility there, across from the University of California, San Francisco. Those talks fell through and Nektar now will have 115,000 square feet of prime space to grow, said its CEO.
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