May 4, 2015
By Riley McDermid, BioSpace.com Breaking News Sr. Editor
The results are in and the case for Boston as America’s new Biotech Capital has been made, with a recent poll from BioSpace finding that two-third of participants believed Boston would soon outpace rivals in California to become America’s biotech hub. In a strange twist, the largest portion of the 550 respondents were actually from California, begging the question of whether the Golden State is losing its biotech edge, even amongst its own community.
After a week that saw Boston biotechs vastly increasing their rosters and a new IBM health unit installed, BioSpace wants your predictions for what Boston can expect in the next year. Get out your crystal ball and tell us what you think is most likely in the cards for Genetown.
The answers are resoundingly clear. Of the 550 polled, 66 percent of respondents said they believe that Boston will become the new biotech capital of the country, beating out rivals like the San Francisco Bay Area and San Diego, Calif. That is not surprising to local biotech leaders, who say the community is thriving now more than ever.
“Massachusetts continues to see growth not only in research and development biotechnology jobs, but in a range of careers across the life sciences ecosystem,” Robert K. Coughlin, president and chief executive officer of MassBio, the Massachusetts life sciences trade association, told BioSpace. “These jobs are an important piece of the Massachusetts economy, but more importantly mean that there are more treatments and cures in the pipeline to help patients around the world.”
In addition, 94 percent of those polled said they believed Boston will add more jobs in 2015. In that job creation, 63 percent said they believed new positions would be added to R&D, 23 percent said in clinical capacities, 8 percent said manufacturing and 6 percent said administrative wings. They have picked a smart place to do it: Boston remains one of the world’s best places to find top-notch life science talent.
“Massachusetts has the highest educated workforce in the United States. It ranks first in the nation in percentage of residents with a bachelor’s degree or higher,” said The Massachusetts Biotechnology Council in a statement. “Its elementary and secondary students perform best in the nation on national assessments.”
The council is an association of more than 650 biotechnology companies, universities, academic institutions and others dedicated to advancing cutting edge research. According to the council, there were 57,642 biopharma employees in Massachusetts in 2013 and the companies employing those workers are responsible for over $7.2 million of in-state payroll. There are more than 550 biotech and pharma companies located in Massachusetts, 284 of which are drug development companies.
“The Massachusetts biopharma industry grew by 41 percent between 2004 and 2013. Massachusetts is home to a biotechnology cluster that is second to none,” it said, adding that money used to fund the industry continues to pour in.
“Massachusetts received $2.3 billion in National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding for basic research in Fiscal Year 2013. Massachusetts researchers receive over 11 percent of all NIH research funds. On a per capita basis, Massachusetts receives over twice as much NIH funding (FY 2012) as the next closest state, Texas”.
Complementing its outstanding biopharmaceutical companies are 122 colleges and universities, over 40 of which offer advanced degrees in the life sciences, the top five National Institutes of Health-funded hospitals in the nation.
The majority of the respondents in this week’s poll were from the United States, with 93 percent of the 550 participants based in America. The rest hailed from a host of countries including Belgium, Germany, France, Canada, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Japan, Ireland, Israel, Greece, India, the Netherlands and Singapore. Three percent of respondents declined to identify their country of domicile.
For states, California led the pack, with 26 percent of the poll’s respondents based in that state. Massachusetts followed with 18 percent, then New Jersey at 16 percent. The rest were distributed throughout the U.S.
