The following is an excerpt from a Boston Globe story published on June 18, 2025:
The headaches keep coming for Massachusetts biotech firms: tariffs, pricing crackdowns, research funding cuts, an exodus at the Food and Drug Administration.
Governor Maura Healey and Marc Casper, the chief executive of Waltham-based lab equipment maker Thermo Fisher Scientific, made subtle nods to those challenges when they spoke at the annual BIO conference at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center on Tuesday. But they chose to focus on the strengths of the Massachusetts biotech ecosystem and the state programs that support it, rather than gripe about the negatives.
Healey, for example, said she recognizes the tariff and funding issues, but she also told those gathered at the Massachusetts section of the convention floor that “I want you to know we have everything we need” in this state. (Everything except an uninterrupted flow of National Institutes of Health funding, that is.)
Kendalle Burlin O’Connell, chief executive of the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, moderated the panel discussion, and asked both Healey and Casper what Massachusetts should do to remain the top state for the life sciences sector.
Healey responded by saying the state needs even more partnerships among the hospitals, universities, and venture capitalists here.
“That kind of communication is what makes this ecosystem so powerful,” Healey said. “It’s also going to help us get through the moment that we’re in.”
The positive vibes continued with the subsequent panel, in which Eli Lilly executive Vanessa Barth, Deborah Glasser of Sanofi, and Maurice Phelan of Sartorius talked about why their companies chose to grow in Massachusetts. The general consensus: It’s hard to beat the potent mixture of talent, universities, research, and venture capital in Greater Boston.
“There’s no other place in the world that’s like Kendall Square, and it’s now expanding beyond Kendall Square,” Glasser said of the Cambridge life sciences hub. “Everybody is trying to copy that Kendall Square recipe.”