Poland’s Selvita Stakes Out its Own Space in U.S. Pharma Hubs of Boston and San Francisco
September 18, 2015
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
CAMBRIDGE, Mass— Poland-based drugmaker Selvita will launch Selvita, Inc., a U.S. subsidiary, that will take up residence in Cambridge, Mass., the hottest pharmaceutical and biotech real estate market in the country.
Selvita said it selected a space in Cambridge because it appreciates the importance of the U.S. biotechnology and pharmaceutical market and wanted to be closer to its clients and partners. In addition to space in Cambridge, Selvita said it is taking office space in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Cambridge space will be the headquarters of the new Selvita, Inc. and work there will be responsible for supporting work with the company’s partners on the east coast of the United States. The work done in San Bruno will support the company’s partners based in the western United States, the company said in a statement.
Selvita, which was founded in 2007 and focuses on the development of oncology therapeutics, currently employs 265 people. Over the past two years, Selvita struck a number of deals to expand its capabilities in terms of proteomics, the company said. The company’s Protein Chemistry Laboratory focuses on analysis, production and purification of recombinant proteins. Selvita’s SEL24 project is targeting two kinases, PIM and FLT3 mutants, shown to be crucial for development of acute myeloid leukemia. Clinical development is expected in 2016, the company said on its website.
“The U.S. drug discovery market is already the largest for Selvita and absolutely strategic for the future development of the company,” Pawel Przewiezlikowski, Selvita’s chief executive officer said in a statement . “Our presence in U.S. will not only bring us closer both to our current and potential U.S. clients, but at the same time will facilitate the bidirectional transfer of know-how between our labs in Poland and the partner base in the U.S.”
Selvita did not specify what will be done in its new space, or if the company would be hiring to staff the site.
Selvita is not the only pharmaceutical company to see the value of establishing a presence in the greater Boston area. This month Chicago-based AbbVie announced it was taking over 43,000 square feet of space in a complex once occupied by Vertex Pharmaceuticals . Abbvie, the maker of arthritis drug Humira, did not disclose what it intends to do with the new space.
Cambridge, Mass. has become one of the most sought after areas for pharmaceutical and biotech companies. Earlier this month Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Company nabbed an extra 6,000 square feet of space, taking the company’s total real estate in the Cambridge-area to 23,000 square feet. In May Eli Lilly announced it will build a new drug delivery and device innovation center in Cambridge, called the Lilly Cambridge Innovation Center. The new center was established as part of a push by Eli Lilly to be an industry leader in providing reliable drug and medical device delivery to the marketplace, John Lechleiter, president and chief executive officer of Lilly, said in a May statement.
One of the reasons for the greater Boston area becoming such a major hub in the biotech and pharmaceutical industries is the plethora of research universities in the area. Boston also has one of the highest educated workforces in the nation. Not only are smaller companies calling the Boston area home, but many larger and established pharmaceutical companies, such as Pfizer Inc. , GlaxoSmithKline , Takeda Pharmaceuticals , Sanofi , Biogen Idec, Inc. and Novartis AG have presences in the city. The close proximity of so many pharmaceutical and university laboratories provides researchers and scientists easy access to clinical studies and building partnerships between companies.
In May, Selvita also opened up an office in another Cambridge – Cambridge, England, the home of AstraZeneca PLC . Those offices will support Selvita’s operations in England, the company said in a statement.