Boston biotech leases 38K SF for research, office space

BOULDER — Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Cogent Biosciences Inc. (Nasdaq: COGT) has leased 38,075 square feet on Pearl East Circle in Boulder..

The lease for space at 4840 Pearl East Circle was signed July 6, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The owner is BCSP Pearl East Property LLC, formed in mid-June, an affiliate of Beacon Capital Partners LLC in Boston.

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BCSP bought the 485,000-square-foot Pearl East Business Park for $190 million, BizWest reported July 6.

Occupancy is set for May 1, 2022, or when most of up to $9.2 million in tenant improvements are done. Lease documents show that BCSP will pay 75% of that and provide a 6% loan to Cogent for the rest.

Cogent gets the first 14 months rent-free. The lease is for 12 years at $1.5 million for the first year, going up 2.5% a year to $2 million in year 12. The lease includes three five-year options for Cogent.

Lab space

Cogent is a development-stage biotech company. In its second-quarter report this week, it showed a net loss of $16.5 million, an increase from a $7.3 million loss in the same period last year.

In July 2020, a predecessor company, Unum Therapeutics Inc., merged with Kiq Bio LLC, which was backed by venture-capital and institutional investors. Both were also in Cambridge. The new company changed its name to Cogent in October.

According to news reports, Unum raised $62 million in a 2018 initial public offering and hit a high of $16 per share. The following year, its drug candidate aimed at cancer cells produced, in Phase 1 clinical trials, at least two deaths. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration halted the trial, and Unum shares fell 90% in one year.

Cogent wants to find new treatments for diseases driven by genetics. Its lead candidate is meant to inhibit a genetic mutation in a specific type of protein receptor, which creates too many of a type of white blood cell. A second disease in its sights involves cancerous tumors that develop along the gastrointestinal tract.

It has said it will advance clinical trials on these treatments through mid-2022. BizWest reported on these plans as Cogent in April opened an office in Boulder and hired John Robinson, previously with Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE) and Array Biopharma Inc., as chief scientific officer to lead the work from Boulder.

Cogent said then it planned to hire a handful of researchers in Boulder and build enough new room for up to 50 total.

Brokers on the new, 38,000-square-foot lease were Chad Kollar, a managing principal in Cresa’s Denver office, and Chad Henry, director of leasing and marketing with WWR Real Estate Services LLC, part of W.W. Reynolds Cos., in Boulder.

W.W. Reynolds owned Pearl East Business Park until 2015, when moved it for $85 million as part of selling 1.5 million square feet of office space in Boulder and Fort Collins to Unico Investment Group LLC. Unico flipped the one-third of that total that was in Fort Collins less than a week later.

The space on Pearl East includes room for labs and the tenant improvement total allows for their creation. The lease notes that the buildings “shall be used only for general office, drug research and development and laboratory use, including a small mammal/rodent vivarium.”

The lease provides for 114 parking spaces, or three per 1,000 square feet.

It was unclear how much space Cogent leases at its 200 Cambridge Park Drive headquarters, where it moved floors as it moved from its prior iteration as Unum. The building overall is 239,000 square feet and six stories, according to LoopNet, with multiple tenants.

Cogent has suite 2500; SEC filings show the non-cancellable lease ending in April 2023 with a five-year company option.

Cogent closed today at a $357 million market cap. It had 15 employees as of its March annual report; Unum had about 30 when it began moving to its new structure and name.

In August 2020, the company sold technology related to its prior work to Sotio LLC in Boston, part of a cancer biotech based in Europe for $8.1 million and up to $3.4 million in milestone payments.

It concurrently subleased 70% of its space in Cambridge, a securities filing said.

Requests for comment from Cogent and W.W. Reynolds were not immediately returned.

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