In March 2013 it was announced that GSK wiould close the Sirtris facility in Cambridge and will relocate some of the 60 employees to Philadelphia. In April 2008, Sirtris Pharmaceuticals had acquired by British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline Plc. Sirtris Pharmaceuticals is a biopharmaceutical company developing and commercializing novel therapeutics that modulate sirtuins, a recently discovered family of enzymes that promotes the body's natural defense against disease. Also known as class III histone deacetylases (HDACs), sirtuins are attractive drug targets for diseases of aging, including metabolic and neurological diseases. Sirtris has built the dominant sirtuin intellectual property estate and know-how, with a comprehensive suite of reagents, proprietary assays, transgenic animal models, and biomarkers.
