Pfizer to add 50 staffers at its Cambridge lab
Facility's role in drug company's operation growing
PHILADELPHIA -- Pfizer Inc., the drug manufacturing giant based in New York, said it is hiring additional scientists at its Cambridge research lab as the facility has assumed a larger role within the multinational corporation.
Philip J. Vickers, a Pfizer vice president and head of the Memorial Drive facility, said the firm is about halfway through hiring 50 additional staffers, including scientists, which would bring the workforce there to 175, an increase of 40 percent. He said the company recently advertised 25 positions and received 2,500 responses.
The lab, which had been called the Discovery Research Center, is now known as the Research Technology Center. In addition to conducting research to discover promising compounds that might be developed into drugs, the center helps Pfizer's scientists with development issues such as evaluating the safety, toxicity, and metabolism of prospective drugs.
''If you want to get top-quality life-science individuals, you can't do better than Massachusetts," Vickers said this week at BIO 2005, the biotech industry's largest annual convention. ''We couldn't be in a better spot."
In the past few years, more large pharmaceutical firms have set up research outposts in Cambridge and Boston to tap into local talent, discoveries at universities, and promising technology at nearby biotech companies. Novartis AG of Switzerland in 2003 moved its worldwide research headquarters to Cambridge. Earlier this year, Schering-Plough Corp. of New Jersey said it would acquire NeoGenesis Pharmaceuticals Inc. to establish a Cambridge presence.
Next week, Organon, the pharmaceuticals unit of Dutch drug conglomerate Akzo Nobel NV, will officially open its new research center on First Street in East Cambridge.
Vickers said Pfizer is hiring people with capabilities in systems biology and kinases, proteins that regulate biologic processes within cells. Despite being part of an international company with about 115,000 employees, Pfizer's Research Technology Center avoids the bureaucracy and lethargy often endemic to large organizations, he said.
''We're small and nimble, and have a real biotech feel," he said.
Vickers, like representatives from several other companies with Massachusetts facilities, spent time at the Massachusetts pavilion during the Philadelphia convention to promote the state's leadership in biotechnology. He said he did so at the behest of the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, the local trade association. Vickers said he isn't concerned that attracting more pharmaceutical firms to Massachusetts will increase competition.
''More companies means more opportunities for collaboration," he said.
Pfizer's local partners include Caliper Life Sciences Inc. of Hopkinton, which supplies microfluidics equipment used to speed the screening of thousands of drug candidates.
Jeffrey Krasner can be reached at krasner@globe.com. 
