LI biotech firm moving 25 jobs to Fla.

IRX Therapeutics, a Farmingdale biotech company, is moving to St. Petersburg, Fla., where it expects to bring 25 existing jobs and add 15 more jobs right away, Florida Gov. Rick Scott said.

The departure would be the latest blow for Long Island's efforts to retain companies. Last week, Arrow Electronics, the Island's largest publicly traded company, said it will shift its headquarters from Farmingdale to Colorado.

IRX has been based in recent years at a bioscience incubator building on the Farmingdale State College campus. IRX chief executive John W. Hadden II didn't respond Friday to a request for comment.

Suffolk County did not get advance word about IRX, Jim Morgo, chairman of Suffolk's industrial development agency, said Friday. Suffolk and New York State would have "prepared a retention package" in response, he said. "Some of the Southern states are like sharks circling our businesses," Morgo said.

New York's Empire State Development Corp. "was not contacted for assistance at any point, but if we were, ESD would have made every effort to work with the company to remain on Long Island," Austin Shafran, spokesman for the development corporation, said.

One factor that may have played a part in the move is the planned expansion of OSI Pharmaceuticals Inc. into a second building at the Farmingdale biotech park, where IRX is now located. The state and Suffolk County have provided substantial incentives for the much larger OSI to occupy the entire building.

In St. Petersburg, IRX will initially employ 40 people as it enters final trials for a commercial launch of the cancer therapy drug IRX-2, and could then add a projected 280 manufacturing and development jobs should the drug succeed in making it to the marketplace, Scott said in a statement late Thursday.

The Tampa Tribune reported Friday that, altogether, Florida put together a $1.2 million package to attract IRX. Scott flew to New York to personally lobby Hadden and other company officials, the Tribune said.

Despite the loss, "the recent $172 million private investment by half a dozen biopharmaceutical companies on Long Island, leading to over 6,000 jobs retained and created, demonstrates the strength of the region as a place for businesses to grow and invest," Shafran said.