Novartis To Move Facility to Cambridge

Biotech giant Novartis AG announced Monday it plans to open a massive research facility in Cambridge this winter that will eventually employ 900 scientists.

Novartis will build its 255,000 square foot research facility in a space near Kendall Square that it has leased from MIT.

The announcement came at a press conference that included Novartis executives, medical researchers and politicians such as Sen. Edward M. “Ted” Kennedy ’54-’56 (D-Mass.) and Rep. Michael G. Capuano (D-Mass.).

“All of us are so inspired and excited about by the announcement of this company investing here in the Kendall Square area,” Kennedy said. “You are very welcome to Cambridge, Massachusetts and Boston.”

The company, based in Basel, Switzerland, celebrated the move with a lavish dinner at the Fogg Art Museum last night, attended by professors and researchers from Harvard and MIT and state politicians.

At the dinner, Novartis CEO and Chair Daniel Vasella spoke about the importance of collaboration between the research capacities of universities and the real-world products of the new facility.

“This is a premier academic environment,” said Vasella. “We looked at Europe and the U.S. and the East Coast and the West Coast, and Boston was the best location.”

The company plans to base all the research it now does in Japan, Europe and the U.S. in the new site, which will be called the Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research Inc. (NIBRI).

Mark Fishman, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and the director of cardiovascular research at Massachusetts General Hospital, will become the head of NIBRI.

Fishman said he was attracted to the job by the unique opportunities Novartis offers for both science and business.

“I think we can invent a new field of science,” said Fishman. “I believe we can invent a culture that is neither industry nor academia, but the best of both worlds.”

Paul Herrling, the new head of corporate research for Novartis, stressed the importance of the Cambridge area as the nexus of the burgeoning biotech industry, with scientists, academics and businesses working together.

“We are very complimentary,” Herrling said of universities and companies like Novartis.

“Universities provide the basic science on which we build to make medical products,” he continued. “What we can do is integrate these discoveries into projects and bring them all the way to the patients.”

Promoting the growth of the biotech industry in and around Boston has been a major goal of University President Lawrence H. Summers, who has said he hopes the Boston area will become the biotech equivalent of Silicon Valley.

Provost Steven E. Hyman said yesterday he is pleased with the growing biotech industry in Cambridge, but said it is still too early for the University to consider leasing undeveloped land it owns to biotech companies.

An advisory committee on whether to use the University’s land in Allston for science, which would discuss such options, has yet to meet.

“The timing for Allston simply was not right,” Hyman wrote in an e-mail. “Moreover the question of whether we would lease space to biotech or large [pharmaceutical companies] has not been discussed yet.”

Although Harvard was not directly involved, Herrling credits the successful collaboration of Novartis and a number of Harvard professors at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute with influencing the decision to come to Cambridge.

“That was the experience that told us it would work,” said Herrling. “We hope that by being here we will have many more successes.”

Depending on the success of NIBRI, Herrling said, Novartis may look to expand further in the Cambridge area.

—Staff writer Joseph P. Flood can be reached at flood@fas.harvard.edu.