ALZA in Palo Alto

Most drug companies try to find new molecules. ALZA tried something else. Its founder believed that many good drugs worked badly because of how they entered the body: a big dose all at once, then a slow fade. If a device could release a drug steadily for hours or days, the same medicine could work better with fewer side effects. That idea, worked out on Page Mill Road starting in 1968, produced the medicated skin patch, the slow release pill and a generation of Palo Alto biotech founders.

This profile covers ALZA's founding, its years in Stanford Research Park, the products that made it famous and its sale to Johnson & Johnson in 2001. It is a companion to our page on Syntex, the company ALZA's founder helped bring to Palo Alto.

Alejandro Zaffaroni

Alejandro Zaffaroni was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, on February 27, 1923. He earned a degree from the University of the Republic in 1945 and a PhD in biochemistry from the University of Rochester in 1949. In 1951 he joined Syntex, then a small steroid maker in Mexico City. He helped turn it into a multinational drug company and helped move its operating headquarters to Palo Alto in 1959. In 1962 he became president of the Syntex subsidiary in the United States.

By the late 1960s he wanted to run his own company. He left Syntex and founded ALZA in 1968. The name is a syllable from each of his names: AL for Alejandro and ZA for Zaffaroni. He later founded or cofounded a string of other companies, several of them in Palo Alto. He died at his home in Atherton on March 1, 2014, at 91.

Delivery, not discovery

Zaffaroni's model came from endocrinology. Glands release tiny amounts of hormones at a steady rate. Those small amounts have a large effect. A pill swallowed every few hours does the opposite. Blood levels spike, then drop. ALZA set out to build systems that copied the body's slow, steady release.

That meant engineering as much as chemistry. ALZA's systems used membranes, polymers and in one famous case osmotic pressure to meter out a drug. A patent application for a transdermal system, a drug delivered through the skin, was filed in 1969. Over the next three decades ALZA developed several delivery platforms:

• Transdermal patches. Drug reservoirs worn on the skin that release medicine through a rate controlling membrane.
• OROS. The Osmotic Release Oral System, a pill with a semipermeable shell that draws in water and pushes the drug out through a tiny laser drilled hole at a steady rate.
• Implants and electrotransport. Later platforms included the DUROS implant and E-Trans, which used a small electric current to move drug through the skin.
• Liposomes. Through a 1999 acquisition, ALZA gained the Stealth liposome technology used in the cancer drug Doxil.

The Stanford Research Park years

ALZA leased land in Stanford Research Park for its first facility, according to company histories. Wikipedia gives the address of the corporate headquarters it built there in 1971 as 950 Page Mill Road. Syntex had distributed shares of ALZA to its own stockholders, so the young company was public while it still waited for its first FDA approval.

The location made sense. Syntex was a short drive away on Hillview Avenue. Stanford's medical school and chemistry department were a few minutes up the road. The park itself, still often called the Stanford Industrial Park at the time, was filling with electronics firms such as Varian and Hewlett-Packard. ALZA brought pharmaceutical engineering into that mix. Our Stanford Research Park guide explains how the university's ground leases work.

Martin Gerstel, ALZA's second employee, ran planning, administration and finance in those early years. He became chief executive and cochairman in 1987.

First products and a near collapse

ALZA's first FDA approved product came in 1974. Ocusert Pilo-20 and Pilo-40 were thin wafers placed under the eyelid that released the glaucoma drug pilocarpine for about a week. The product showed that controlled release worked, but sales were modest.

Money ran short. In 1977 the Swiss drug maker Ciba-Geigy took a controlling interest in ALZA. The partnership was difficult. By the time the two split in 1982, ALZA was close to bankruptcy, according to company histories.

The patches turned things around. In August 1981 the FDA approved Transderm Scop, a small patch worn behind the ear that releases scopolamine to prevent motion sickness. Two months later Transderm-Nitro, a nitroglycerin patch for angina, was approved. These were among the first medicated skin patches sold in the United States. The format went on to carry hormone, pain and nicotine drugs.

Growth and the move to Mountain View

The late 1980s were ALZA's big years. Procardia XL, a once a day version of Pfizer's blood pressure drug nifedipine built on OROS, was approved in 1989. Duragesic, a fentanyl patch for chronic pain, followed in 1990. Nicoderm, a nicotine patch to help smokers quit, was approved in November 1991. In 1990 ALZA had 650 employees, more than half of them in research and development.

The company outgrew Page Mill Road. It bought land in Vacaville in 1984 for a 117,000 square foot manufacturing plant. It opened new facilities in Mountain View in 1988. Wikipedia dates the headquarters move to the Shoreline Business Park in Mountain View to 1990. Company profiles from the late 1990s list the headquarters at 1900 Charleston Road, Mountain View. That campus later became known as Alza Plaza.

Ernest Mario, a former chief executive of Glaxo, became ALZA's chief executive in late 1993. In March 1999 ALZA bought Sequus Pharmaceuticals, the maker of Doxil, for about $580 million in stock. Abbott Laboratories agreed to buy ALZA in June 1999, but the deal was called off in December 1999 after antitrust objections from the Federal Trade Commission. In 2000 Concerta, an OROS version of the ADHD drug methylphenidate, won approval and became one of ALZA's best known products.

Johnson & Johnson and after

In 2001 Johnson & Johnson bought ALZA in a stock for stock transaction valued at about $10.5 billion. Over its independent life ALZA had brought more than 20 prescription products to market. ALZA continued for some years as a Johnson & Johnson unit in Mountain View. Wikipedia reports that the headquarters stayed at Alza Plaza until late 2007 and that Google moved into the Alza Plaza buildings in August and September 2008. The Vacaville plant was slated to close by 2022.

The people scattered across the Peninsula. A group of former ALZA executives started Jazz Pharmaceuticals in Palo Alto in 2003. Zaffaroni himself had already moved on to new ventures, including the DNAX research institute in 1980 and Affymax in 1988.

Timeline

ALZA's address today

The 950 Page Mill Road address has come full circle. It is now Page Mill Labs, a 77,300 square foot building of flexible wet labs for life science startups that opened in 2025. We could not confirm whether any of ALZA's original structures survive there. The building is private, but you can see it from Page Mill Road. Genencor's longtime headquarters sat next door at 925 Page Mill Road; see our Genencor profile.

There is no ALZA marker in Palo Alto. If you want to trace the story in person, ride or drive along Page Mill Road and Hillview Avenue, where Syntex and ALZA both started. For lunch nearby, see where to eat near Stanford Research Park. For the wider history of science companies in the area, see our research labs guide.

Frequently asked questions