Celgene leaving technology park
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Celgene Cellular Therapeutics, which patented a process to harvest stem cells from placentas, is shutting down its Baton Rouge operations and moving out of the Louisiana Technology Park on Florida Boulevard.
“I can confirm that we have taken an organizational action to close our Baton Rouge site,” said Greg Geissman, a spokesman for Celgene Corp., Celgene Cellular’s parent company in Summit, N.J.
Geissman said Celgene Corp. will issue an official statement later today.
Tech Park president Stephen Loy said Celgene informed him of the closure, although he was told it will not happen immediately.
Loy said he was not sure how many employees Celgene has here.
Celgene came to Baton Rouge in 2002, when it acquired a locally based company called Anthrogenisis, which had been lured here through the efforts of former Congressman Richard Baker.
The company’s work was seen as prestigious for Baton Rouge because its use of placentas for stem cell research promised to provide a solution to the political issues dogging stem cell research.
Republicans and Democrats are still sharply divided over embryonic stem cell research. Getting stem cells from placentas after babies’ births would have gotten around conservative concerns about using fetal tissue.
Celgene applied for patents in 2005 for sickle cell anemia research and made news most recently in May, after stem cells, blood and tissue from its labs were used by an LSU doctor who was the first to transplant stem cells from an afterbirth to treat a child with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a cancer of the bone marrow and blood.
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