October 21, 2015
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
BOSTON – The pharmaceutical industry presence in Boston may be getting a little bit more crowded. Germany-based Bayer AG may be looking to open up an office in the area to interact with biotech startups and academic institutions on drug discovery programs, the Boston Globe reported this morning.
If Bayer does set up a post in the crowded Boston area, it would not likely include any laboratory facilities, but more along the lines of a business incubator. The setup would be similar to the Kendall Square-based Johnson & Johnson Innovation Center that was developed to strike deals with biotech and pharma startups, the Globe reported. Bayer already has several partnership deals in place with area research institutes, including the Broad Institute of MIT and at Harvard University, the Globe added.
Johnson & Johnson’s JLABS, established by its subsidiary Janssen Inc. is finding some success working with small startups on drug discovery and in other areas. As an incubator, JLABS provides space for startups to work. JLABS is part of Johnson & Johnson ’s external R&D arm. The program provides a “capital-efficient, resource-rich environment where emerging companies can transform the scientific discoveries of today into the breakthrough healthcare products of tomorrow,” according to the JLABS website. JLABS is a “no strings attached” model, which means that startups setting up shop in the JLABS facilities do not automatically give away any rights or ownership stake to Janssen .
Speaking at Boston business luncheon on Monday, Bayer CEO Marijn Dekkers said the company would not open lab space in the area because it would find itself thrust into a hiring competition with other companies that have already established a lab presence in the area. Major pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer Inc. , Merck & Co. , Sanofi and Novartis all have laboratory presences in the Boston area.
Any Bayer facility established in the Boston area would be similar to other “collaboration” sites the company has in places like San Francisco and Tokyo, which employ about 100 people each. However, what kind of research and collaboration Bayer, known for its work in cardiovascular disease and oncology, would focus its attention on is not being disclosed at this time, the Globe said.
Bayer’s possible Boston investment comes on the heels of the company’s September reorganization into three separate divisions focusing on life sciences. The three divisions are Pharmaceuticals, Consumer Health and Crop Science. The reorganization goes into effect Jan. 2016. Earlier in September, Bayer spun off it MaterialScience business in order to focus on its life sciences. It spun off its MaterialScience plastic unit, which was renamed Covestro, and went public as a separate entity on Sept. 4, 2015. The MaterialScience unit had a value of approximately $11.7 billion.
In addition to discussing possible collaborative space in Boston, Dekker also discussed prescription drug prices, specifically addressing Turing Pharmaceuticals’ Martin Shkreli, who has become the poster-boy for high prescription drug prices after raising the price of a recently acquired drug by 5,000 percent. He was critical of the decision, equating it to a “get rich quick” scheme. He said if Shkreli, a former hedge fund manager, is in the pharmaceutical industry to merely get rich, he should just go work on Wall Street.
