Incyte to close Palo Alto facilities

Incyte Corporation will close its Palo Alto, California, research facilities and headquarters, effective April 2, 2004, completing its transition to a drug discovery and development company.

As a result, Incyte will reduce its workforce by 257 employees and expects to eliminate approximately $50m in annual operating expenses. The company says this action will not affect its ability to leverage its extensive gene-related intellectual property portfolio or to collect milestone and royalty payments associated with its prior and current LifeSeq subscription agreements.

Incyte will continue to operate its Proteome subsidiary in Beverly, Massachusetts, which produces the BioKnowledge Library (BKL) information product line. BKL provides fundamental biological information about human, animal, and microbial proteins based on expert, literature-based annotation.

Dr Paul Friedman, Incyte's ceo, stated: 'The decision to close our Palo Alto facilities reflects the difficult realities of the genomic information marketplace and our belief that Incyte's most promising, value-creating activities are taking place in drug discovery and development. We appreciate that Incyte's long history in genomics has provided critical intellectual property and financial resources that will serve the company well going forward, and we wish to extend our appreciation to the Palo Alto team for their many contributions to Incyte's past growth and commercial success.'

Dr John Keller, Incyte's executive vice president and chief business officer, said: 'As the volume of public domain data has increased, our ability to secure high-value subscriptions for our proprietary genomic data product lines, LifeSeq and ZooSeq, has decreased. As a result, we can no longer justify the extensive investment and infrastructure associated with the Palo Alto site. Incyte's information product-related activities are now focused on the Proteome subsidiary and leveraging our intellectual property portfolio.'