March 2, 2015
By
Mark Terry
, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
San Diego-based
BioMed Realty Trust, Inc. (BMR)
announced
today that
Vertex Pharmaceuticals
terminated leases on three properties in Cambridge, Mass. As a result,
BioMed
recaptured about 313,000 square feet of space and will receive a $14 million termination fee from
Vertex
.
“The deal is a win-win for
Vertex
and
BioMed Realty
since
Vertex
can be relieved of these lease obligations moving forward, and we have great space to meet the growing life science real estate demand in Cambridge,” said
Bill Kane
, senior vice president of
BioMed Realty
in a statement. “Tenants requiring 30,000 to 100,000 square feet in Cambridge are struggling to find available lab space, and we see venture capital and IPO activity driving aggregate demand for 1.3 million square feet of new lab space over the next three years in Cambridge.”
BioMed
owns more than three million square feet of laboratory and office space in the Boston/Cambridge area, including a
facility
that
Baxter Healthcare
’s new spinoff,
Baxalta
, will be moving into on Kendall Street.
Vertex Pharmaceuticals
, headquartered in Boston, Mass., was founded in 1989 with $6 million in venture capital. It markets Kalydeco (ivacaftor) for the treatment of cystic fibrosis. It also has two more compounds, lumacaftor (VX-809) and VX-661 in Phase III clinical trials for cystic fibrosis, an influenza treatment, VX-787, in Phase II trials, which is outlicensed to
Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
, and two compounds, VX-970 and VX-803, in Phase I trials for cancer treatments.
It’s not entirely clear why
Vertex
terminated the contracts for these locations. However, the company has spent a significant part of 2014
consolidating
its operations on the South Boston waterfront. It is leasing 291,000 square feet of office space at West Kendall Street in Cambridge’s Kendall Square, and also leases space from
Biomed
in San Diego.
Vertex
recently outlined
its 2015 business priorities and announced its 2014 financial reports. “
Vertex
enters a year where the potential approval and launch of the combination of lumacaftor and ivacaftor, and continued geographic and label expansion for Kalydeco, are expected to significantly increase the number of people treated with our medicines,” said
Jeffrey Leiden
, chair, president and chief executive of
Vertex
in a statement. “We enter 2015 with a strong cash position of approximately $1.4 billion, which, when combined with continued revenue growth, will allow us to invest in key internal and external opportunities in CF and other diseases to bolster our pipeline and position the company to advance other transformative medicines in the coming years.”