[BTinSF]

Friday, February 6, 2009
Five Prime grabs more space at Mission Bay
San Francisco Business Times - by Ron Leuty

Pushing toward clinical trials with a handful of potential drugs, Five Prime Therapeutics Inc. is subleasing 5,000 square feet at 1700 Owens St. in Mission Bay to make batches of proteins.

The first-floor space — in addition to just under 30,000 square feet it subleases next door from the J. David Gladstone Institutes — caps a year of growth for the 100-employee San Francisco biotech. It secured an equity and collaboration deal with Pfizer Inc., grew employment at a 20 percent clip and built out its immunology group, its next major discovery area, said Five Prime President and CEO Gail Maderis.

“We’re bursting at the seams here in the Gladstone building,” Maderis said. “Having the Pfizer collaboration is expanding our headcount and our need for space.”

Five Prime is leasing the new space from Gladstone as well, which last year took about 10,000 square feet at 1700 Owens for its growing translation research programs.

Although Five Prime’s hiring will slow this year, Maderis said, the new process development suite in the Alexandria Real Estate Equities-developed building will give the company more firepower. Specifically, it will provide Five Prime with a 100-liter bioreactor to produce all the product it needs to reach clinical trials with drugs like its potential treatment for bone loss during cancer. It currently uses a 7-liter bioreactor in the Gladstone building.

Five Prime has one drug, designed to fight advanced solid tumors, in a Phase I trial and a total of nine in pre-clinical or selection stage. It focuses on oncology, metabolic diseases, regenerative medicine and immunology.

Privately held Five Prime, which Maderis said has upwards of two years cash at the ready, will continue to contract out manufacturing of clinical-scale drugs.

rleuty@bizjournals.com / (415) 288-4939

Source: http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/...ml?t=printable