Pfizer's Biotherapeutics and Bioinnovation Center was scheduled to occupy the upper west-wing floors of 455 Mission Bay in early 2010, which is when it is scheduled for completion. The company reportedly held an option to lease an additional 50,000 sf in the east wing.

Instead, Pfizer's existing biotheraputics research operation will remain in South San Francisco at 259 East Grand Avenue, the home of Rinat Neuroscience, a company it acquired in 2006, and the man slated to head the new center, Bay Area biotech entrepreneur Corey Goodman, is no longer with the company.

In January, Pfizer bid $68 million for Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, a Madison, NJ-based drugmaker with a large biotech research group. The acquisition is expected to close later this year. In April, it was announced that Wyeth executive Mikael Dolsten would head biotech research at the combined companies, but said it still planned to occupy its new space at Mission Bay.

Pfizer spokeswoman Joan Campion tells GlobeSt.com that ultimately the acquisition of Wyeth—and the global real estate portfolio that comes with it--did indeed play into the company's decision not to relocate the local operation to Mission Bay. Also taken into account were overall occupancy costs and the disruption to science caused by the relocation of a research operation.

"It was a real estate decision," Campion said after declining to discuss the cost to terminate the Mission Bay lease. "Economics was a factor but not the only factor."