Pfizer is making more changes to its layout in California by stepping away from a South San Francisco office site that used to host the headquarters for its 2022-acquired Global Blood Therapeutics.
The 164,150-square-foot office building on Oyster Point Blvd is closing its doors as the office space is “currently underutilized,” a Pfizer spokesperson told Fierce Pharma in an emailed statement. The move comes after “careful evaluation” and will see all employees at the site transition into remote roles.
“Pfizer continues to maintain a strong presence in California, including its facilities in San Diego,” the spokesperson said. “Furthermore, we are evaluating several options, including subleasing the building.”
The address matches that of the former headquarters of Global Blood Therapeutics, which Pfizer scooped up in 2022 for $5.4 billion. Two years later, the company laid off 52 employees at the site as part of its “enterprise-wide cost realignment program,” a Pfizer representative said at the time.
That cost-cutting initiative also yielded layoff rounds in New Jersey, Connecticut, Michigan and other locations, including Ireland, as the company’s COVID products faced plunging demand after the sales highs of the pandemic.
More recently, Pfizer last April sold its five-building campus in San Diego to life sciences real estate firm BioMed Realty for $255 million, more than a decade after originally picking up the site in 2004. Fifty-six layoffs at the site also took effect that June, although a spokesperson noted at the time that the "sale of the previous site and the employment decisions are not associated or connected to one another."
The New York-based pharma still maintains a San Diego presence through a 15-year lease at a nearby two-building property in Torrey Heights dedicated to Pfizer’s oncology sector. The company also has an office site listed in Aliso Viejo, California.
Along with bringing Pfizer its San Francisco office space, the company’s Global Blood Therapeutics acquisition was meant to offer a sickle cell disease pipeline plus marketed drug Oxbryta, estimated at the time to be worth more than $3 billion in combined worldwide peak sales. Pfizer ultimately withdrew Oxbryta from global markets in 2024 after new clinical information suggested that the overall benefit of the drug “no longer outweighs the risk,” according to a company statement at the time.
Another asset from the acquisition, P-selectin inhibitor inclacumab, flunked in a phase 3 study last year, representing another blow to Pfizer’s sickle cell prospects after the prior termination of another inclacumab study.