Massachusetts’ largest life science employer has put more than 630,000 square feet of office space on the sublease market as part of efforts to consolidate the Japanese company’s U.S. corporate hub at a new Cambridge development scheduled to open later this year.
A Takeda spokesperson told Fierce Biotech that it was on track to open its new R&D facility being developed by BioMed Realty in Kendall Square later this year, which it announced in 2022. Located at 585 Kendall St., it will occupy 600,000 square feet of lab and office space and include a 30,000-square-foot performing arts center with a 400-seat performance space.
The downsize will bring the company’s presence to 1.43 million square feet of space in Cambridge across four buildings, a drop from its previous 1.56 million-square-foot footprint across seven buildings.
“Our strategy has been to bring together Takeda’s global R&D center and other key operations into a One Cambridge campus, expanding our presence in Kendall Square,” a Takeda spokesperson told Fierce. “The new 585 Kendall facility will be a state‑of‑the‑art space that brings science and technology together to enhance collaboration.”
The Big Pharma is looking to sublease properties at 300 Massachusetts Ave., 35 Landsdowne St. and 40 Landsdowne St. for a total of 630,153 square feet.
Takeda is also marketing around 125,000 square feet of space at 75 Binney St. in Cambridge that became available after a subtenant vacated the property. “This availability is unrelated to Takeda’s One Cambridge Campus and represents true excess capacity,” a Takeda spokesperson said.
In addition to the new facility, Takeda recently renewed a portion of its long-term lease at 125 Binney St. in Cambridge with Alexandria Equities until 2040.
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The consolidation follows Takeda’s layoff of 137 employees that coincided with the closure of its cell therapy facility in October. The company announced that it was seeking a partner to take over Takeda’s cell therapy platform, and Fierce Biotech reported the closure of the 24,000-square-foot R&D cell therapy manufacturing facility that had opened in 2020.
In response to questions about real estate reshuffling, a Takeda spokesperson shared the company would be repurposing the Lexington, Massachusetts, cell therapy facility to support other Takeda therapeutic programs.
The cell therapy facility closure reflects Takeda’s refinement to three modalities: small molecules, biologics and antibody-drug conjugates. The abandonment of cell therapy candidates meant leaving behind GammaDelta Therapeutics, which Takeda bought in 2021 and ultimately led to an expected impairment loss of about $394 million in 2025.
The Takeda consolidation follows layoffs earlier this month from fellow Massachusetts life science company Thermo Fisher Scientific, which continued its run of cuts tied to the closure of its Franklin, Massachusetts, site.
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A state Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act notice listed 103 affected roles, but a Thermo Fisher company spokesperson told Fierce that the max number of layoffs would be 80 staffers. The spokesperson said the remaining 120 people at the 200-person site would be relocated to other facilities in the state.
Takeda’s real estate downsize will add to the region’s growing office sublease market. A January 2026 CBRE report on the Boston area life science real estate market found that vacancy climbed to an all-time high of 28% in the life science sector in the fourth quarter of 2025 and that new construction had slowed as well.
