NOVARTIS
BIG PHARMA COMES TO TOWN
When in Cambridge, major drug companies play by
Cambridge rules in a QUEST FOR BREAKTHROUGHS
RICK MULLIN, C&EN NORTHEAST NEWS BUREAU
CAMBRIDGE, MASS., has always been a diverse community. It’s at once the “fair city”
of Tom and Ray Magliozzi, the regular-guy
hosts of “Car Talk” on National Public Radio, and an elite academic haven where the
red brick and ivy of Harvard University coexist with the modern architectural sprawl
of Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Since the 1980s, the area’s mix of academia and medical institutions, including
Massachusetts General Hospital and the
Broad Institute, has created a breeding
ground for biopharmaceutical companies.
Industry leaders Genzyme, Biogen Idec,
and Millennium Pharmaceuticals settled
among the schools and old manufacturing
buildings throughout the city.
More recently, Pfizer and Novartis
bought an old Model-A Ford tire plant and
a New England Confectionery Co. candy
factory, respectively. Merck & Co. set up
labs across the river in Boston, AstraZen-eca moved to nearby Waltham, and Wyeth
purchased Genetics Institute, which had
built a sizable research campus in the
north end of Cambridge. Last year, Pfizer
purchased Wyeth, more than doubling its
presence in the region.
Big pharma came to the Boston area the
way it does most things—en masse. The
reason is clear. Drug firms wanted to hook
into innovative, risk-taking research at the
frontier of science. Big drug companies
have also invested in West Coast research
operations, acquiring biotech firms in San
Diego and the Bay Area, but the industry
is clearly concentrating its efforts in Cambridge. Novartis, in fact, has established
Cambridge as its worldwide headquarters
for drug discovery research.
ALTHOUGH THE STRATEGY makes perfect sense, success is far from ensured.
Given its tradition of centralized research
focused on blockbuster drugs, big pharma
is the cultural antithesis to the free-flowing
academic world of Cambridge. By all accounts, however, the new neighbors not
only fit in nicely but have actually accelerated the pace of Cambridge-style R&D with
a cross-pollination of academic and commercial research.
Some see big pharma’s arrival in Cam-
bridge as testimony
to the headway drug
firms have made in
breaking up research
into smaller, self-di-
rected units focused
on specific diseases.
BLURRING LINES
Novartis has
converted a candy
factory into an
open workspace
intended to support
multidisciplinary
science.
MORE ONLINE
For a look at how Novartis attracts postdoctoral chemistry
researchers, click on this story at www.cen-online.org.
