Top 10 U.S. Biopharma Clusters
On March 10, 2021, Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News reported, Charles Dickens’ opening line of A Tale of Two Cities—“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”—was evoked recently by the head of the nation’s largest life sciences real estate owner to describe the past year for the industry served by his real estate investment trust.
“With respect to the industry, 2020 is the ultimate paradox: The worst year of our lives, yet the greatest year ever for the life science industry,” Joel S. Marcus, Alexandria Real Estate Equities’ executive chairman and founder, told analysts February 2 after releasing fourth-quarter and full-year 2020 results. “[There’s] much work to do to rebuild businesses and lives so devastatingly impacted, and I would say, it’s going to take a good part of this decade to do that for many people who’ve been really so devastated.”
Yet the industry scramble to develop vaccines and drugs against COVID-19 and diagnostics for the virus also propelled the life sciences to record high venture capital of $23.5 billion in 626 deals in eight life sciences categories covered by GEN (biotechnology, disease diagnosis, drug delivery, drug development, drug discovery, drug manufacturing, pharmaceutical distribution and wholesale, and pharmaceuticals/drugs), according to the PwC/CB Insights quarterly MoneyTree™ Report. PitchBook and the National Venture Capital Association recorded even more activity in the “biotech and pharma” category of $27.4 billion last year, up from $17.3 billion in 2019.
Judging from the numbers reported by the nation’s top U.S. clusters, 2020 saw record-high amounts of lab space and NIH funding, as well as record-high numbers of jobs and patents. Those highs are reflected in high regional numbers seen in GEN’s annual ranking of the nation’s top 10 biopharma clusters. GEN ranks regions based on five quantifiable criteria:
NIH funding—Taken from the publicly available NIH RePORT database, for the current federal fiscal year through March 1, plus all of fiscal year 2020, which ran from October 1, 2019, through September 30, 2020.
Venture capital (VC) funding—Figures for all of 2019 and all of 2020. For some regions, figures were compiled through the publicly available PwC/CB Insights MoneyTree™ Report. For other regions where figures were not available from MoneyTree, figures were furnished to GEN by regional life sciences groups.
Patents—Based on the number of patents containing the word “biotechnology” awarded since 1976 in namesake cities and suburbs where key companies are located.
Lab space—Based on the highest total-size-of-market figure, in millions of square feet, furnished by any of several commercial real estate companies, including JLL (in its annual U.S. Life Sciences Outlook report for 2020), CBRE, Cushman & Wakefield, and Newmark.
Jobs—Based on figures furnished by regional life sciences groups, or where those figures do not exist, from JLL’s report. While job numbers are included in the rankings, less weight had to be given to job totals in regions where GENhas found widespread discrepancies in job figures.
This year’s rankings show the leading regional cluster maintaining its number-one position which it has held since the 2015 A-List—a year after GEN’s first top-10 list ranking U.S. regions. However, clusters 2–5 are nipping at its heels, and coming closer to the top than ever, thanks to playing on different strengths. Also since the 2019 A-List, the regions occupying positions #7 through #10 have all switched positions, with two regions gaining and two losing.
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