June 3, 2015
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
To boost efficiency Japan-based Takeda Pharmaceutical Company will consolidate its vaccine operations into one facility in Cambridge, Mass. and shutter vaccine operations in Bozeman, Mont., Madison, Wisc. and Fort Collins, Colo., the company announced late Tuesday.
Additionally, the company’s U.S. vaccine business unit headquartered in Deerfield, Ill. will also be moved to Massachusetts.
The operational shift will be conducted over multiple phases and is expected to be completed in mid-2017, the company said. By putting vaccine operations under one roof, the move will allow the company to streamline its development operations and execute pending Phase III programs and eventual commercialization, the company said.
The Cambridge campus, along with a site in Zurich, Switzerland, will serve as Takeda’s vaccine business unit hubs for all business outside of Japan. The unit will maintain regional hubs in Singapore and Brazil. Takeda will continue to manufacture its vaccines at sited in Hikari, Japan, Durham, N.C. and Singen, Germany. Takeda launched its vaccine business in 2012 and has developed vaccines for norovirus, dengue and seasonal influenza.
“Our sites in Bozeman, Fort Collins, Madison and Deerfield have been instrumental in bringing our dengue and norovirus programs to late stages of clinical development. Takeda remains fully committed to the development of innovative vaccines that improve the lives of people around the world, including our norovirus, dengue and seasonal influenza candidate vaccines,” Rajeev Venkaya, president of Takeda’s vaccine unit said in a statement.
The Boston Business Journal reported the consolidation would impact about 150 positions, but did not say how many positions would be shifted to the Boston area. Takeda currently has offices in the Boston area, mostly those acquired when Takeda took over Millennium Pharmaceuticals in 2008. There was no word on whether or not the company would continue to use that office space, or if the company would seek new facilities.
Takeda acquired three of its vaccine sites that will be closing through company acquisitions. The Bozeman site was acquired through Takeda’s acquisition of LigoCyte Pharmaceuticals in 2012. The Madison and Fort Collins sites came to Takeda through the acquisition of Inviragen, Inc. in 2013.
Takeda’s consolidation continues to show the strength of the Boston area as the East Coast hub for the pharmaceutical industry. More and more companies continue to relocate or take office space in the Boston area to take advantage of the high number of research talent available in the area.
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, GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi, Biogen-Idec and Novartis 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.
According to the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, which makes its home in Cambridge, Mass., the heart of the state’s biotech industry, the biotech and pharmaceutical presence in the state grew by 41 percent between 2004 and 2013. Across the state the industry employed 57,642 in 2013, the most recent year with complete data.
Recent growth in the Boston area includes IBM’s new health unit, which will employ 2,000, as well as GSK’s new innovation center in Boston
, which trades on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, was down 28 percent this morning from a high of 6,050 yen per share.
Will PfizerKline Become the Next Pharma Player?
The speculation surrounding a possible bid from Pfizer Inc. for struggling GlaxoSmithKline is heating up, after one closely-watched biotech analyst said in a note last week that Pfizer buying the company would “unlock access to its balance sheet and improve its tax situation.”
Gregg Gilbert, a biotech analyst at Deutsche Bank, wrote in a note to investors “Introducing PfizerKline” that he thinks a deal would be “materially accretive” for both companies. Gilbert estimated that a bid priced at $29.86 a share, via half stock and half cash, which would push up Pfizer’s earnings per share by 10 percent to 16 percent beginning in 2016.
“We believe that the company has a sense of urgency to create value by leveraging the power of its balance sheet to do needle-moving deals,” Gilbert wrote. “Since media reports in the past have pointed to the potential for a Pfizer/GSK combination, we are revisiting that theme.”
We want to know, dear readers, if you agree? Should Glaxo continue going it alone, or might Pfizer buy it and create one of the world’s largest pharma players in history?
