A major biotech company is leaving the Bay Area.
Pfizer is abandoning its research site at 181 Oyster Point Blvd. in South San Francisco. The biotech company will move out of the building by the end of April, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. (The Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst but have separate newsrooms.) The closure comes after the company sought a tenant to sublease the 164,000-square-foot facility, the outlet said.
“After careful evaluation, Pfizer has decided to close its South San Francisco office as the office space is currently underutilized,” company spokesperson Jerica Pitts told the Chronicle in a statement.
California Employment Development Department spokesperson Sean Bennett told SFGATE the company has filed no layoff notices. Instead, Pitts said, the employees at the Bay Area site will transition to remote roles.
The move is another chapter in what has become a downward trend for biotech companies in the Bay Area. Investor funding that was overflowing during the pandemic has since dried up, SFGATE previously reported, and as investors pulled out, development pipelines on new drugs slowed.
In 2022, Pfizer acquired the South San Francisco sickle cell disease drug developer Global Blood Therapeutics for $5.4 billion. But less than two years later, the company laid off 52 workers from the location.
Pfizer is one of the major producers of the COVID-19 vaccine and has several patents to protect the investment. The company still has offices in La Jolla.