For decades, a handful of regions around Boston, San Francisco and New York dominated the U.S. pharma and biotech scene. But they’re not the only players in the life sciences game.
Cities outside these major hubs are starting to make names for themselves, courting the biotech industry with infrastructure investments, relocation and expansion support, grants and other perks.
Dallas, for instance, which is home to UT Southwestern, was recently selected as one of three regional hubs for the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, a new federal agency within HHS. And that’s only the latest addition to the city’s growing biotech presence.
“There is significant health and life science activity throughout the region, with $1.6 billion of life sciences venture capital funding to DFW [Dallas-Fort Worth] between 2018 and 2022,” Dallas city council member Omar Narvaez said by email. “Additionally, there is a growing life sciences labor pool here, with the number of researchers growing 33% in the past five years.”
In Pittsburgh, which has seen recent investments in life sciences, AI, robotics and tech, the just-launched Pittsburgh Life Sciences Alliance aims to propel the region into a more prominent global life sciences position, counting pharma giant Bayer among its industry advisory council members. There’s also Pitt BioForge, a 185,000 sq. ft. biomanufacturing facility currently under construction.
According to Chandan Sen, director of the University of Pittsburgh’s McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the “wave … is clearly measurable.”
“Taking all this together, I see in the next five [to] 10 years, Pittsburgh will pull itself up into a major hub,” Sen said.
Here’s a closer look at what’s happening in three of these up-and-coming biotech hotspots.
Dallas
Why it’s hot: Becoming one of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health’s hubs is only one of Dallas’s biotech bonafides. It’s also got billions of dollars in venture capital, infrastructure and business development investments, tax incentives and other funding being funneled into the city. There’s a hotspot within a hotspot, too — Pegasus Park is a 23-acre business center with dedicated space for life sciences companies.
“The city has supported the development of Pegasus Park as a biotech hub by providing assistance to BioLabs and Bridge Labs, two significant real estate projects to support the biotech ecosystem,” Narvaez said.
Notable companies: Colossal Biosciences, a gene editing “de-extinction” company, has made splashy headlines with a goal to “resurrect” the woolly mammoth; Gradalis, a late-stage company is developing personalized cell therapies for patients with solid tumors.
What’s new: Mark Cuban’s Cost Plus Drugs recently said it will manufacture its own low-cost generic drugs at its Dallas-based headquarters. In March, Colossal announced it can reprogram elephant iPSC cells, which had never been achieved before.
Pittsburgh
Why it’s hot: Ranking in the top 25 metro areas for life sciences employment, and outpacing Dallas and Salt Lake City in employment growth from 2019-2022, Pittsburgh’s biotech investment is largely driven by academic and healthcare institutions, including UPMC Enterprises, the medical center’s venture capital arm that committed $1 billion to life sciences investments in 2020. In addition to the Pitt BioForge biomanufacturing facility, which will focus on cell and gene therapies and have advanced manufacturing, wet lab and incubation spaces, there’s also the Manufacturing Futures Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, which has a biomanufacturing component.
Notable companies: Krystal Biotech is a gene therapy company focused on areas of high unmet medical need and won FDA approval last year for Vyjuvek, a wound treatment for people with dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa; ElevateBio, a cell and gene therapy biotech, will eventually locate one of its manufacturing centers at Pitt BioForge.
What’s new: The National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences awarded a $7.8 million grant to the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and UPMC to create a new drug discovery center called the Pitt Translational Center for Microphysiology Systems. The biotech company Imagine Pharma, which is developing an IMG-1 polypeptide, raised a $32.5 million Series A round in October.
Salt Lake City
Why it’s hot: Utah’s life sciences industry is one of the fastest-growing in the U.S., with efforts at both the state and city level to bring more biotech companies and jobs to Salt Lake City and beyond. In January 2020, Salt Lake City launched “Tech Lake City,” an initiative to attract more tech talent. It also created the public-private agency BioHive to connect and promote the city’s biotech players.
The state also offers tax incentives to technology and life sciences companies that relocate there, and in November, Gov. Spencer Cox proposed a $7 million investment initiative to build the state’s life sciences workforce.
Notable companies: Teva Pharmaceuticals has an R&D facility in Salt Lake City’s Research Park as well as two manufacturing sites in the state; Clene Nanomedicine is a clinical-stage company developing nanotherapeutics for ALS, multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease.
What’s new: Salt Lake City’s department of economic development hired a new technology and innovation strategic advisor last month to boost the city’s biotech industry, and NVIDIA is investing $50 million in Recursion Pharmaceuticals’ AI-enabled drug discovery models.
