Icon plc, an Irish provider of clinical research services to the pharmaceutical industry, has opened and staffed an Irvine office by tapping workers from a recently sold Irvine drug company.
This month, Icon Clinical Research held the grand opening of its local office, in the Chrysler building in the Irvine Spectrum. The office has 30 employees and is expected to add maybe 20 more by year’s end. Icon provides technicians to monitor and analyze the results of clinical research of biotechnology companies.
As it turns out, many of Icon’s technicians hail from Irvine-based CoCensys Inc., a once-promising drug company that ran out of money last year after a key drug failed clinical tests. Louise M. Murphy, a CoCensys executive, laid off 10 employees at the company and then gave herself a pink slip.
But Murphy didn’t wait around for unemployment checks. She contacted Icon Clinical Research to see if the Dublin-based company wanted to open a West Coast office. The company, which began in 1990, has rapidly expanded to 1,100 employees in 18 countries. It went public in 1998 and is traded on both the Nasdaq and Dublin exchanges. Its market cap last week was $189 million.
Within 10 days of contacting Icon, Murphy had a deal. She opened the office in September and even hired some of the employees that she had laid off from CoCensys. The remnants of CoCensys were acquired in September by Purdue Biopharma LP of Norwalk, Conn.
What makes Icon’s choice of a West Coast office particularly intriguing is that Orange County is not as well-known for biotech and pharmaceutical companies, like are San Diego, the Bay area or New Jersey.
One reason that Icon picked Irvine was its central location between LA and San Diego.
Besides, Murphy said, activity is starting to pick up in Irvine. She rattled off the name of big drug makers like Allergan Inc., which while not known for biotech research do have plenty of experienced employees in the medical field. Murphy pointed out one venture capital firm has invested in 10 biotech companies in Irvine. She’s seeing a lot of new buildings going up around her that she expects will be used by emerging biotech companies.
“Orange County will be an area of growth for the biotech industry,” she said. “If we were only in San Diego, we would miss out on what’s happening here in Irvine.” n
