Slideshow: Bayer opens its CoLaborator

Bayer HealthCare showcased its new CoLaborator incubator Monday under sunny skies, literally and figuratively. Leaders of young biotech companies Aronora Inc. and ProLynx LLC, and roughly 100 other guests, officially opened the 6,000-square-foot facility Monday on the ground floor of Bayer's Mission Bay research center. It was, Mayor Ed Lee said, proof that San Francisco is "the innovation capital of the world," linking small and large companies.

Biotech a possible reuse of Potrero power plant site

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San Francisco’s top developers are lining up for the chance to turn what was once one of California’s dirtiest energy generators into one of the city’s most promising development sites. Genon Energy Services LLC, formerlyMirant Corp., has issued a request for qualifications to at least 50 national and local developers that might be interested in acquiring the now-defunct Potrero power plant — a 22-acre central waterfront site that brings with it huge potential as well as environmental headaches. The site could be redeveloped for offices, institutional use or biotech space.

Peninsula biotech space feels global pharma blues

Compugen's Mary Haak-Frendscho.

The patent expirations and capital efficiency trends sweeping through the global drug industry are playing out in companies’ local real estate decisions. That direction may not bode well in the short term for landlords and developers of biotech space on the Peninsula, with large biopharmaceutical companies buying tiny biotechs and consolidating multiple, smaller locations. But a new generation of biotech companies stands ready to take bits and pieces of the newly available space.

Biotech rivalry: Heritage favors Bay Area, but is Boston the future?

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If South San Francisco’s Oyster Point Boulevard is the gateway to biotech’s birthplace, One Kendall Square in Cambridge may be the highway to the industry’s future.

With increasing amounts of seed, startup and early-stage venture cash, a $10 billion state program and a mixture of biotech startups, mature Big Pharma companies and academic interests within walking distance of each other, the Boston area is surging.

Bayer's CoLaborator seeks startups, partnerships

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Bayer HealthCare is launching a bold experiment with four companies, 6,000 square feet of space and a dream of where Big Pharma collaborations could lead.

From now-vacant ground-floor space at its research facility in San Francisco’s Mission Bay, the Berkeley-based U.S. unit of the German drug maker this summer will open its doors to four companies. The hope is that Bayer will not be a mere incubator landlord, but a partner that could use those companies’ technologies or drugs.

Nektar moving 30 research jobs to S.F.

Thirty research jobs will shift to San Francisco by July from a Nektar Therapeutics Inc. facility in Alabama, the company said Tuesday.
The move, the San Francisco-based drug developer (NASDAQ: NKTR) said, will consolidate all of its U.S. research and development work — biology, chemistry and clinical development — at its 102,283-square-foot Mission Bay location. After the move is complete, the San Francisco site will house about 230 employees.

Despite takeover talk, Onyx on rise with HQ expansion, drug portfolio

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As Onyx Pharmaceuticals Inc. preps for an expansion of its South San Francisco headquarters, one question naggingly persists in spite of the company’s success: Will it still be independent when it moves into the space?
Built around the liver and kidney cancer-fighting drug Nexavar and looking at the promise of two other anti-cancer agents, Onyx over the past year has consistently been the center of takeover rumors. That talk picked up late last year with the settlement of a lawsuit with Bayer AG and the continued progress of the two experimental cancer drugs.
For its part, the company has steadfastly played coy. It declined to comment on a November news report, for example, that it had hired Centerview Partners LLP to look at strategic alternatives.
Nonetheless, Onyx continues to move forward, with $600 million in cash, looking every bit like an independent company. It has leased 162,000-square-foot structure, on which BNBuilders Inc. soon will begin construction, next to Onyx’s East Grand Avenue headquarters. It initially will move into 90,000 square feet.
It also recently opened a European headquarters in Switzerland.

Bayer targets Mission Bay incubator, partners

Bayer HealthCare is diving into the Mission Bay incubator business, hoping to parallel the success of nearby startup havens and, perhaps, snag a long-term partner or two in the process.
The drug developer, which in late 2010 set up its U.S. innovation center in San Francisco’s Mission Bay biotech enclave, said Monday that it would create a 6,000-square-foot incubator this summer to house three or four companies.

Shrinking biotechs peddle space to deal-seekers

Sometimes the search for quality biotech real estate along the Peninsula is simply a waiting game.
As tight venture capital checkbooks, the weak economy and risk-averse capital markets continue to squeeze cash-intensive biotech companies, deals on subleases for even freshly built space can be found.
It’s the proverbial win-win for companies — one sheds costs, the other gets top-drawer space for a fraction of the market price.
Sublease deals are nothing new, but the amount of ready-to-move-in, biotech-centric sublease space is strong for companies jumping into the lease market.

Alexandria buys Shorenstein/SKS life sciences complex in Mission Bay for $290M

Six months after selling most of its land in Mission Bay to Salesforce.com Inc., Alexandria Real Estate Equities wants to jump back into the neighborhood with the $290 million purchase of 409-499 Illinois St.
Alexandria is in contract to buy the 450,000-square-foot, two-building life science complex that Shorenstein Properties and SKS Investments completed in 2008.
The complex is anchored by FibroGen Inc., which leases 239,000 square feet. The transaction has gone non-refundable, but has not closed yet.
Both Shorenstein and Alexandria declined to comment.

Real Deals: Onyx, stem cells, neuroscience, the Science Center at Oyster Point and more

The San Francisco Business Times' annual Real Estate Deals of the Year hit the streets Friday. Here are the life sciences-related real estate stories stories:

Best new R&D
UCSF stem cell research building
Near the base of Mount Sutro and behind the jam-packed medical towers of UCSF’s Parnassus Avenue campus, there was no hiding the complexity of designing and constructing a $123 million stem cell research building on a hillside.

There was the $20 million that needed to be shaved from the original conceptual design by architect Rafael Vinoly — without cutting net square footage. There was the complication of building the 68,500-square-foot structure just a few miles from the San Andreas Fault.
Arching over the entire project, too, was the timetable set by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, which jumpstarted the project with $34.9 million of state bond money: 24 months to go from schematic design to work-ready occupancy.

Best new R&D (finalist)
Stanford stem cell research building
Stanford University is coming together over stem cells.
The university’s $225 million, 200,000-square-foot stem cell research center — the nation’s largest such facility — will house 550 researchers, ranging from those studying developmental biology and immunology to those concentrating on cancer and neuroscience.

Best R&D Sale/Lease
Chamberlin portfolio
BioMed Realty Trust bought Chamberlin Associates' high-profile Science Center at Oyster Point and Gateway Business Park in October — a potential 1.2 million square feet in the heart of the biotech industry, South San Francisco — for $290.3 million cash and an interest rate swap liability of $7.7 million.

Best R&D Sale/Lease (finalist)
Bayer U.S. Innovation Center
Salesforce.com is moving in, but the heart of San Francisco’s Mission Bay remains life sciences research and development.
In a building originally intended for Pfizer Inc., the world’s largest drug maker, landlord Alexandria Real Estate Equities Inc. has essentially filled it with up-and-coming Nektar Therapeutics Inc. and longtime international player Bayer.
The Bayer deal was sealed in May 2010 for 48,913 square feet in the east wing of the 210,000-square-foot structure.

Best Steal (finalist)
Onyx
Onyx Pharmaceuticals Inc. landed the grand slam of headquarters: a competitive price, room to grow and a spot among the more than two dozen other biotechs in South San Francisco. The 170-person cancer drug company moves in April.

Best Financial (finalist)
UCSF neuroscience building
The University of California San Francisco turned to the traditional lease-back deal to build its Neuroscience Building at Mission Bay, but it re-invented it for its own needs.

UCSF owned the land for the $200 million project, but lacked funding to build it. So it leased the land to a nonprofit group that will sublease it to Edgemoor Real Estate Services and McCarthy Cook & Co. That development team will construct the 237,000-square-foot research and lab facility and lease it back to UCSF.