Why Boston covets its role as biotech hub

The region remains a research leader. Many of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies have opened research facilities here. One is Novartis, which announced that it will move its entire research division here from Switzerland along with as many as 1,000 jobs. Harvard's plan to build a life sciences campus in the Allston section of Boston promises to bolster that lead.

But Massachusetts has enjoyed less success convincing firms that grew up here to keep their manufacturing operations in the state. BioGen IDEC, for example, still has 1,500 employees in Cambridge but built the second largest biomanufacturing facility in the world in North Carolina's Research Triangle Park.

High paying biomanufacturing jobs are an alluring target in states like North Carolina, which wants to employ former textile, tobacco, and furniture workers. Plus, biotech factories pollute less and require less energy than other industries.

That explains why a recent survey of local and state economic development agencies found 83 percent identified biotechnology as one of their top two targets for industrial development, a Brookings Institution study noted.

North Carolina boasts a lower cost of living, cheaper land, and a strong research base anchored in Raleigh and Durham by Duke, North Carolina State and University of North Carolina. The state government has long supported biotech, opening a center to fund training and business development in 1981. More recently, the state committed $60 million of tobacco-settlement money to train workers for biotech jobs.

By contrast, says Michael Astrue, CEO of TKT, says his firm had to import workers trained in manufacturing quality and toxicology from other states to staff its Cambridge manufacturing facility.

"It's not an easy place to do business," says Mr. Astrue, who received one of the letters from North Carolina's House Speaker, Richard Morgan. "Governors of other states call personally, begging us to move, and throw money at us, and here we get treated very rudely by significant people in the political establishment."

Plans by Massachusetts cities to reimport drugs from Canada certainly aren't making biotech companies feel welcome.

"The Canadian medicine crowd would love to turn Massachusetts into a biotech ghost town," one industry source says.

Gov. Mitt Romney's life-science development official, Scott Sarazen, admits the state has "historically been complacent" about biotechnology. He cites new tax rebates and funding for emerging technologies as evidence the state is trying to do better. "Just like the industry is dynamic and growing, we have to always stay current with it."

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