The following are excerpts from a MassLive.com article published on August 26, 2025:
The first biotech companies were created in Cambridge and San Francisco in the 1970s, and now some in that industry are worried our ability to invent and manufacture cutting-edge medicines could be slipping away.
Massachusetts has grown into a global leader in the biotech industry over nearly a half-century, developing new medicines for diseases such as multiple sclerosis, cancer, cystic fibrosis and many others. But now industry veterans are worried about both the future of that ranking and overall U.S. competitiveness.
A new report out Tuesday from MassBio, a trade association that represents biotech and pharma companies, as well as hospitals and academic institutions, finds shrinking employment in both manufacturing and research and development jobs — and that data doesn’t yet include 2025 layoffs in the industry.
“The numbers speak for themselves,” said Michael Gilman, chief executive of Arrakis Therapeutics, a Waltham-based company developing new drugs for neuromuscular and cardiovascular diseases.
It’s hard for trade associations or elected officials to have much of an impact on two significant issues the industry is dealing with, he said. The first is high interest rates, which make investors less eager to invest their money in risky biotech companies that may need a decade or more to get their product into the market. The second is the policies of the current administration, which Gilman said are reducing support for university research and creating uncertainty about how drugs will be priced in the future.
“What to do about it is not obvious,” he said. “The damage to the scientific infrastructure of this country and the screwing with the systems that actually deliver health care to patients are existential threats.”
But Gilman noted that the biotech industry has been through up and down cycles in the past, and he expected there would at some point be investor enthusiasm again for putting money into early-stage and publicly traded biotech companies.