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Why Boston covets its role as biotech hub
Prediction of 100,000 new jobs in the industry spurs competition to be the next 'Silicon Valley.'
CAMBRIDGE, MASS.
Inside a former furniture warehouse, scientists at a new biotech facility are busy studying cell proteins.
Across the street, in this neighborhood that straddles MIT and Harvard, a former candy factory is being transformed into the research headquarters for European biotech giant Novartis.
And across the Charles River, Harvard University is plotting its next major expansion: a new life-sciences research campus.
These are just a few of the signs of how the Boston area has grabbed a lead role in a field that many see as one of the most promising industries of the new century: biotechnology.
But even as new outposts of biomedical research rise here, Massachusetts faces competition. Thousands of jobs are at stake, in an era when downsizing is the trend in established sectors such as manufacturing.
Recently, a North Carolina industry group took out a full page ad this month in the Boston Globe inviting biotech firms to come down south, and the speaker of the state's House of Representatives sent personal letters to several CEOs.
It doesn't quite equal the shots fired at Ft. Sumter to start the Civil War, but the stakes are huge in this economic battle between the states.
"It's a big prize," says Mark Dibner, president of BioAbility, a biotech consulting firm based in North Carolina's Research Triangle Park.
With its cluster of top research universities and hospitals, the Boston area has long enjoyed a big chunk of the biotechnology business. Only the San Francisco Bay Area produces as many Ph.Ds, patents, and startups in the field.
Bay State's challenges
But for all its advantages, Massachusetts faces rival states that are touting lower costs of living. Some are also exploiting growing anger within the industry that Massachusetts cities are among those seeking to buy cheaper drugs in Canada.
The field of biotech is transitioning beyond infancy. Companies are just beginning to mine potential commercial applications of cells. One study by the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council found future advances could produce 100,000 new jobs and billions in revenues.
Today, there are 280 biotech companies in Massachusetts, employing more than 30,000 workers. But it is also a fragile moment, as the state's biotech firms mature from start-ups focused on research into more expensive business of developing and manufacturing of drugs.
One company, Transkaryotic Therapies Inc., is typical: founded by a doctor at a Harvard-affiliated teaching hospital, TKT was 12 years old before the firm's first drug was ready for manufacture.
State leaders worry that maturing biotech companies may eventually go the way of other industries that were born in Massachusetts and then slipped away. First, textiles moved south. Then, after pioneering the field of computing and becoming dominant in in so-called minicomputers, the state lost out to California's Silicon Valley. "History must not repeat itself," MIT president Charles Vest told a summit of Massachusetts life-science industry leaders in September. "We can't miss this one as we did the silicon revolution."
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