In its quest for the next Big Thing, Pfizer is getting into the incubation business.

The drugmaker is setting aside a 26,000-square-foot building on its La Jolla campus, which has lab space and meeting rooms that will be leased out to select entrepreneurs. The chosen few will receive advice and various amenities - including a concierge - in exchange for a cut of anything they invent.

The incubator, which will operate distinctly from the rest of the company, is housed in a modern, tile-and-glass building on the drugmaker’s Torrey Pines campus, and Pfizer plans to spend $10 million annually for at least the next five years.

Of course, Pfizer hopes the end results will one day help it strategically, either by providing new drug candidates or technologies that make finding drugs more efficient, says Catherine Mackey, a senior vp of global R&D, who heads the La Jolla labs.

Tenants will have to agree to an up-front equity-share agreement. When research is done, Pfizer will have an option to acquire rights at a fair market price. Or the incubator could spin out the company as an independent business.

There’s room for five to eight individual company labs, and when the tenants are chosen, Pfizer will provide chemicals, tissue samples, computers and whatever else the tenants might need to start working the day they move in. There will also be access to Pfizer pfolks; an autoclave and washing room that will be staffed and will serve all the companies; shipping and receiving facilities and storage space.

“It’s the biotech equivalent of staying at the Ritz-Carlton and calling the concierge with the craziest request and the answer always seems to be yes,” says Mackey.

Jeff, the briefcases belong on the third floor, please!

Full story in The San Diego Union-Tribune.

[tags]Incubators, Pfizer[/tags]