When you look at this year’s MassBio 2024 Industry Snapshot, you can see the expected (venture funding was down) and the unexpected (the local workforce grew by nearly 3,000 net new jobs). You could celebrate the R&D growth that puts Massachusetts close to overtaking California, or the fact that 65 percent of VC funding went outside Cambridge. For me, I’m struck by the importance of this industry to the Massachusetts economy and that companies located here are leading in advanced modalities … and how this gives the Commonwealth a huge opportunity. Let me explain.
Last year was a tough one for many, with high interest rates and global economic headwinds. We all know that biopharma took the hit harder than most industries because of how high we climbed during the pandemic—we had further to fall. And yet, because of the resilience of the Massachusetts ecosystem, we still found a way to grow the total biopharma workforce by 2.6 percent—and the R&D by 3.7 percent—in 2023. That’s not to say there wasn’t pain behind the layoffs and closures, but it stands in contrast to a national decrease of 0.5 percent in the R&D workforce and California’s loss of 3,000 R&D jobs (-4.27%).
A little history is in order. In 2008, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts made a $1 billion, decades-long investment in the life sciences industry. It was a gamble, but one that paid off. Since that original authorization and the subsequent re-up in 2018, we’ve seen a 115 percent increase in the size of the biopharma workforce in Massachusetts. Over those 15 years, the drug development industry went from a part of the state’s identity to one of its largest drivers of economic growth.
And in a down year, it showed its ability to carry the load of keeping the engine chugging along. At the end of 2023, the Massachusetts biopharma industry was 3.7 percent of all employment in Massachusetts—but had accounted for nearly 17 percent of all employment growth over those twelve months.
Now, let’s look at what this workforce is focused on in the lab. The most common therapeutic areas of the Massachusetts pipeline are oncology (35 percent) and central nervous system (15 percent). Nothing surprising there. Massachusetts companies also make up 15.2 percent of the national pipeline of new drugs. That is impressive when you think that, while the nation’s largest drugmakers have operations here, their headquarters are in other states—giving those states credit for their pipelines.
When you go deeper, however, we find what I think is a promising signal that Massachusetts is in an advantageous position when it comes to where the industry is going. Massachusetts has a higher percentage of advanced therapeutic modalities (ATMs) in its pipeline than any direct competitor. While California has more in its pipeline, they represent a smaller percentage of its total pipeline. Even Pennsylvania and the self-declared ‘Cellicon Valley’ of Philadelphia find themselves trailing Massachusetts.
Of course, the impact on patients is top of mind. ATMs are a category that encompasses engineered cell therapies that reprogram cells to fight disease, gene therapies that involve replacing or editing dysfunctional genes, and nucleic acid therapies that promote or shut down protein production (Source: Harvard Business Review). They hold the promise to change lives for individuals who have seen little progress in their disease areas; to be functionally curative for those sick since birth; to upend the treatment of rare genetic diseases. In fact, they’re already doing it (see mRNA vaccines and gene therapies for sickle cell disease).
For Massachusetts, the impact could be the expansion of biomanufacturing and the jobs that would come with it. Though the Snapshot showed a small decline in statewide biomanufacturing jobs, a jump of nearly 12 percent in the same jobs in central Massachusetts is a preview of what could happen and where. It is important to note we’re not talking about large batch manufacturing; that’s not where the growth potential is in this part of the country. Rather, these are personalized medicines that are made by a company for a particular patient. These companies want them to be made close to their R&D, and clinics want them produced near where they’ll be administered. We have the biopharma companies and the hospitals, why not the production facilities as well?
A new Life Sciences Initiative would help unlock this potential. One is pending on Beacon Hill and the hope is it will be approved soon. With the federal government considering limits of Chinese contract manufacturing, there will not only be a need for domestic options, but also the prospect of federal funding to build the infrastructure. We should be ready to compete for and win those grants. Finally, biomanufacturing jobs can open the life sciences industry to a whole new pool of talent, with many positions not requiring advanced degrees.
Massachusetts’ life sciences industry had a bumpy couple of years, just like the rest of the country and world, but we have an incredible opportunity to continue to have an outsized role in global human health. At the same time, this industry could protect its economic competitiveness by extending our lead in R&D, while building a new base in biomanufacturing.
Ben Bradford is the head of external affairs at MassBio and lead author of the MassBio 2024 Industry Snapshot.