The following are excerpts from a feature in The Boston Globe by Emma Platoff that published in the Sunday Globe on August 9, 2026:
For many biotech startups, Boston used to feel essential. Yet for Wong, neither East Coast scientific greatness nor his local upbringing was enough to keep his company here, where Boston could directly benefit from the jobs it has created, the money it has raised, and the treatments it may discover. And for a region struggling through the Trump administration’s attacks on “eds and meds,” a region whose economic future likely runs through biotech, health care, and life sciences, that’s a big problem.
Wong’s story is the type that Kendalle Burlin O’Connell, CEO of the industry group MassBio, hates to hear.
“He’s the exact phenotype of entrepreneur-founder that we built here … and we want to keep here,” she said. The number of 26- to 34-year-olds leaving Massachusetts is the highest on record, data show; “we should all be hugely concerned about” that outmigration, she said.
There have been some bright spots for biotech in Boston lately, with proceeds from IPOs on their way to passing levels last seen in 2020 and 2021. But Burlin O’Connell said she fears too many of those dollars are going to established companies, not early-stage innovators. She said MassBio is working on improving incubator programs to help young companies launch here much the way Integrated Biosciences did in California.
“The early-stage biotech ecosystem is the secret sauce of Massachusetts. … It is what has made us the envy of the world,” she said. “We’ve got to work to keep them here. We can’t just assume that they’re going to stay here.”
Read the full story at BostonGlobe.com (unlocked courtesy link).
