Pfizer is making further changes to its California layout, pulling out of the South San Francisco office site that was home to Global Blood Therapeutics, which it acquired in 2022.
The 164,150-square-foot office building on Oyster Point Boulevard will close because the office space is “currently underutilized,” a Pfizer spokesperson told Fierce Pharma in an emailed statement. The move was made after a “careful evaluation” and will see all front-line employees transition to remote roles.
“Pfizer continues to maintain a strong presence in California, including our facility in San Diego,” the spokesperson said. “Additionally, we are considering several options, including subleasing the building.”
The address matches the address of the former headquarters of Global Blood Therapeutics, which Pfizer acquired in 2022 for $5.4 billion. Two years later, the company laid off 52 frontline employees as part of a “company-wide cost realignment program,” a Pfizer representative said at the time.
The cost-cutting effort also resulted in layoffs in other regions, including New Jersey, Connecticut, Michigan and Ireland, as the company’s COVID-19 products faced a sharp drop in demand as sales increased due to the pandemic.
Most recently, Pfizer sold its five-building San Diego campus to life sciences real estate company BioMed Realty last April for $255 million. More than 10 years have passed since we first acquired this site in 2004. In June of the same year, 56 job cuts at the site also came into effect, although a spokesperson said at the time: “The sale of the previous site and the employment decisions are not related or related.”
The New York-based drug company maintains its presence in San Diego with a 15-year lease on two nearby buildings in Torrey Heights dedicated to Pfizer’s oncology division. The company also has offices in Aliso Viejo, California.
The company’s acquisition of Global Blood Therapeutics, which was intended to give Pfizer office space in San Francisco as well as its sickle cell disease pipeline and over-the-counter drug Oxbrita, was estimated at the time to be worth more than $3 billion in combined global peak sales. Pfizer ultimately pulled Oxbrita from the global market in 2024 after new clinical information suggested the drug’s overall benefits “no longer outweigh the risks,” according to a company statement at the time.
Another asset from the acquisition, the P-selectin inhibitor incracumab, failed in a Phase 3 trial last year, dealing a further blow to Pfizer’s sickle cell prospects after another incracumab trial was canceled ahead of time.
