Nektar Therapeutics looks to sublease 200K sf in Mission Bay

San Francisco-based Nektar Therapeutics plans to shed nearly 200,000 square feet of its office and laboratory space along with 500 jobs in Mission Bay.

The biopharmaceutical company is jettisoning the space and staff following clinical trial failures and the end of its cancer-fighting program with Bristol-Myers Squibb, the San Francisco Business Times reported.

The firm will also close and sell its 88,000-square-foot R&D facility in Hyderabad, India, and end its collaboration with SFJ Pharmaceuticals, based in Pleasanton. The SFJ program depended on the Nektar drug bempegaldesleukin, or “bempeg,” to fight head and neck cancer.

But the drug failed multiple cancer trials in combination with Opdivo, with Bristol-Myers Squibb forcing Nektar and its partner to end a 50-month venture that once promised $3.6 billion in sales.

“Today is a difficult day for all of us at Nektar,” said Nektar President and CEO Howard Robin.

Nektar also shed top talent, including Chief Medical Officer Dr. Dimitry Nuyten, to be replaced by former immunology chief Dr. Brian Kotzin, and Chief Commercial Officer John Northcott this summer.

A company restructuring, expected to save $120 million a year, means going from 735 employees to 225 employees, starting this week.

It is the second major restructuring of Nektar over the past 15 years. The first came after the dissolution of a partnership with Pfizer built around the inhaled insulin drug-device that sold poorly.

Nektar, however, rebuilt itself around the power of its proven pegylation technology, which extends the amount of time a drug stays in the body. The company deployed that primarily in cancer. Now, with access to hundreds of millions of dollars and no debt on its books, Nektar will shift toward becoming more of an immunology company, Robin told analysts.

Nektar has been a pillar of San Francisco’s Mission Bay, one of the first companies to buy into the biotech campus around the University of California, San Francisco. .

It rents 155,215 square feet in the district for its headquarters and research and development work, and 135,936 square feet on Third Street for R&D. Both leases – the 455 Mission Bay Blvd. site with Alexandria Real Estate Equities, the 360 Third St. location with Kilroy Realty – expire in 2030.

[San Francisco Business Times] – Dana Bartholomew

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