Last month, we reported that Xcyte was auctioning off all its lab equipment in Bothell and Seattle as the company continued to sink. (Here’s that report, BTW: http://www.heraldnet.com/stories/05/11/16/100bus_biotech001.cfm). Well, MSNBC and the Puget Sound Business Journal report the biotech is now cutting the size of its Seattle headquarters by half. Here’s that: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10433244/
On the subject of struggling biotechs, I mentioned in this blog last week that Northwest Biotherapeutics is moving south into King County. Here’s the actual brief on that from Saturday’s newspaper: http://www.heraldnet.com/stories/05/12/10/100bus_briefs001.cfm. NW Bio isn’t the only one to move that direction this fall.
Earlier this year, Eden Biosciences Corp. ended an expensive lease on space it wasn’t using along Monte Villa Parkway in south Snohomish County and moved its headquarters a few hundred feet to the south in King County.
While the companies themselves usually pay no attention to county lines, the loss of the two firms to King County will probably be noted by the Snohomish County Economic Development Council (http://www.snoedc.org/life_sciences.shtml), which has been trying to recruit even more biotech into our county.
In this case, the losses aren’t that great. The two companies are staying in the area, so employees who live here won’t lose jobs. And, to be honest, Eden and NW Bio are tiny blips on the biotech map of Puget Sound. Neither is close to making money or expanding greatly soon. Combined, the two employ many fewer people than Seattle Genetics or possibly even Sonus Pharmaceuticals and nowhere near ICOS, SonoSite or Berlex.
To learn more about either Eden or NW Bio, try here for Eden, http://www.edenbio.com, and here for NW Bio, http://www.nwbio.com/
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