Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer sold a five-building San Diego biotech office complex in one of the region’s largest real estate deals by total price in the past year.
San Diego-based BioMed Realty, owned by global investment firm Blackstone Group of New York, acquired the five-building Pfizer research campus spanning nearly 631,000 square feet for approximately $255 million, according to public filings.
The high-priced deal signals optimism for San Diego, one of the nation's top biotech hubs, after two years of cooling demand for the property type across the country caused by a development surplus during the pandemic as investors poured money into health research.
Industry analysts expect long-term demand for lab and office space to remain steady in coming years in regions such as Boston, San Francisco and San Diego, the three largest U.S. hubs for life science real estate.
Located at 10555-10777 Science Center Drive, buildings in the campus were completed between 1998 and 2004 in the Torrey Pines neighborhood of coastal La Jolla. The buyer and seller confirmed the transaction but declined to elaborate on matters such as investment strategy, future space usage or pending tenant signings as Pfizer transitions out of the property.
A spokesperson for New York-based Pfizer said the sale of the campus stemmed from factors that included the pharmaceutical maker’s decision last year to sign a 15-year lease for a large space at developer Breakthrough Properties’ newly built biotech office campus in San Diego.
Biotech outlook
Pfizer leased 230,000 square feet at the Breakthrough project, known as Torrey Heights, in the Del Mar Heights-Carmel Valley neighborhood to house its oncology research operations in San Diego. Pfizer since late 2024 has been transitioning into the new location and retains a significant presence elsewhere in San Diego along with other offices and labs nationwide.
The Pfizer transaction at the Breakthrough Properties complex was among the region’s largest office leases of 2024. “Pfizer remains committed to the San Diego area and is proud of our Torrey Heights campus,” Pfizer said in an email to CoStar News this week.
A BioMed Realty spokesperson said the company “plans to offer a best-in-class setting” at the newly acquired campus “in support of our tenants’ missions to advance human health.” The purchase of the Pfizer campus brings BioMed’s San Diego portfolio to 2.9 million square feet, the spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
“We are excited to expand our presence in Torrey Pines — a premier submarket for biotech and home to some of the country’s top research institutes and pharmaceutical R&D programs,” the BioMed spokesperson said.
San Diego’s life science market entered 2025 with an 18% vacancy rate, its highest level in more than 15 years, according to a February report by Joshua Ohl, senior director of market analytics for CoStar Group in San Diego. The region’s biotech space availability rate, with subleasable space factored in, topped 30% at the start of 2025, nearly double the rate at the same point of 2021.
Life science brokers in San Diego have said 2025 will likely be marked by continued lean demand amid reduced tenant space requirements, as more square footage gets placed back on the market for subleasing. Several nationwide biotech developers, including Alexandria Real Estate Equities and IQHQ, have recently scaled back plans for new construction in San Diego and other life science hubs.
Future demand for biotech space is expected to come from research and development in growing fields such as diabetes, obesity, cancer and dementia, according to industry analysts. In the near term, though, company pullbacks in space demand are likely to bring elevated vacancies nationwide.
For the record
Aric Starck of Cushman & Wakefield represented the seller and buyer in the Pfizer campus sale.