So what happens after pharmaceutical giant Pfizer abruptly shutters a big research and development campus?

Hopefully, we won't ever have to find out here in southeastern Connecticut. But it's at least a little encouraging to know that there have been some promising stirrings from the ashes of the facility in Ann Arbor, Mich., which Pfizer shut down last year.

Stephen Rapundalo can see the now-empty Pfizer plant in Ann Arbor from his office window, and it's not a pretty sight, especially for Rapundalo, who is a city councilor.

”I drive by it every day and it's sad to see it empty,” he said. “There are some relatively new buildings there, and many of us were surprised when they closed it.”

And yet Rapundalo, who was a research scientist at Pfizer until he lost his job in the company's 2005 “adapting to scale” downsizing, is an example of the positive things that can happen in a post-Pfizer world.

Rapundalo is now president and chief executive officer of MichBio, a non-profit trade group dedicated to developing the biotech industry in Michigan, one he says is still growing, despite two big waves of Pfizer layoffs in recent years.

Some of the growth comes from former Pfizer employees who have either started their own companies or joined others, part of a developing cafeteria of small companies that can do drug development research work.

Some offer services, like conducting clinical trials, to the big pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer. Others are developing their own drugs and show a nimbleness that the big players may find hard to match.

One Michigan startup by former Pfizer scientists is developing what the founders believe to be a better treatment for type 2 diabetes, one without the side effects of current drugs. They started out in a spare bedroom of someone's house, have found some big backers and have raised more than $10 million.

The company hopes to make it through a third phase of drug trials and get Food and Drug Administration approval to bring the drug to market by 2013.

Or maybe one of the big companies will buy them before then.

”Generally speaking, the large pharmaceuticals seem to be moving to a model where they are largely an end development and marketing company that will have to feed its research and development from the outside,” Rapundalo said.

Rapundalo estimates about 16 new companies were formed by ex-Pfizer employees after the 2003 layoffs in Kalamazoo, which followed Pfizer's purchase of Pharmacia. He says another 25 or so emerged after the Ann Arbor closure last year.

About a third of the people laid off last year in Ann Arbor have stayed in the area and work in the industry, he said. And he added some who went to other Pfizer facilities, in San Diego, St. Louis, England and Groton, have returned.

”We have developed a real strength here largely as the result of the downsizing of Pfizer,” he said. “The skill set has stayed.”

As for the plant in Ann Arbor, it's on the market, all 2 million square feet of it.

I'm glad things are working out in Michigan for many of those who lost their Pfizer jobs. And I hope we never get the post-Pfizer test here in Connecticut.