Since Amgen shut down its Bothell, Wash. site in 2014, life science employment growth has increased 13 percent across the state. According to The Seattle Times, companies across the region are in a scaling up process.
Seattle Genetics is coming off a strong fourth quarter with a 58 percent increase in sales, driven in part by two additional approvals of Adcetris in 2018 for previously untreated Stage III or IV classical Hodgkin’s lymphoma and as a frontline treatment for CD30-expressing peripheral T-cell lymphoma.
When announcing those financial results earlier this month, Clay Siegall, chief executive officer of Seattle Genetics, said the company expects the momentum for Adcetris will continue through 2019 and will be a primary driver of commercial growth for the company. Part of the company’s drive for a strong year includes the opening of a branch office in San Francisco in order to lure to lure top biotech talent to the company.
In an interview with the Puget Sound Business Journal ahead of the end of 2018, Siegall said the Bay Area has a “plethora of phenomenal biotech people” the company would like to bring on board. However, one of the challenges Siegall has run into seems to be that those candidates have some reservations about moving to Seattle. Some of those reasons could be family issues or other. In order to get around those reasons not to move, the company opened the office in the Bay Areas, which will employ between 30 and 40 people, the Journal said. This is the company’s first office outside of the Seattle area and more could be coming in time, Siegall said. While it is opening a branch office in California, the Journal noted that Seattle Genetics is currently expanding staff in Washington as well, in part, fueled by its strong pipeline.
Seattle Genetics isn’t the only biotech company in the area to see growth. According to The Seattle Times, companies across the region are in a scaling up process. Demand at FujiFilm-SonoSite is so high, the Times reported, that the maker of portable ultrasound devices has added a 10-person weekend shift to its assembly line. The company is looking to expand and it is having to compete with the nearly 200 life science companies across the Seattle area.
The growth of employment across the state’s life science sector can be attributed to the success of product development these companies have been making. At the end of January, Life Science Washington, the industry association in the state of Washington, issued a report that showed a 13 percent increase in employment across the state’s sector from 2014 to 2017. Those numbers represent the strongest employment growth for the industry in a decade, the organization said. That’s a significant turnaround from a few years ago when Amgen walked away from its Bothell facility and terminated more than 600 people.
Leslie Alexandre, president and CEO of Life Science Washington, said the employment increase followed several years of “lackluster growth” in the state’s life sciences industry. At the end of 2017, in Washington, there were 35,914 individuals are employed in life science jobs, the state organization said. While growth has been strong across the entire industry, Life Sciences Washington said employment in the medical device industry, a subsector of life sciences, increased by 14.2 percent in the last two years from 2015 to 2017.
“Building a life science company takes years, but we are now seeing many of our young, research-oriented companies thriving and expanding by adding manufacturing and commercial operations,” Alexandre said in a statement.
In 2017, the state’s life sciences industry, which includes more than 1,100 organizations, represented $22.7 billion in total economic activity and contributed $11.5 billion in value-added activity to the state’s gross domestic product. In 2018, Washington had more than $11.5 billion in life science transactions, which includes IPO’s, M&A activity and venture equity investments, the trade group said.
