Non-Asian people of color currently make up just 14% of the Massachusetts biopharma workforce, according to a new report on diversity, equity and inclusion from the trade group MassBio. That’s worse than in 2021, the last time MassBio published its DEI report, when non-Asian people of color stood at 15% of the life sciences industry, and well under the proportion of people of color — 32% — who make up Massachusetts’ population as a whole. (MassBio typically counts Asian people separately because they are overrepresented in the pharmaceutical industry.)

At the executive level, things are even worse. The percentage of white executives in the life sciences has actually increased in the last two years, from 63% to 76%. Asian executives made up 15% of management, up from 13%, while the portion of other people of color again slid, going from 8% to 6%.

And even as companies grow closer to gender equality, it’s white women who are advancing: Between 2021 and 2023, the percentage of Asian women and other women of color in executive management remained the same, at 7% and 3% respectively, while the portion of white women increased from 27% to 36%.

“The percentage of people of color in the workforce is still terribly under-representative of the Massachusetts population, and there is a continued reported underinvestment in DEI,” MassBio president and CEO Kendalle Burlin O’Connell said in a statement. “A lack of resources, bandwidth, and budget assigned to DEI is still holding us back.”

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As for gender parity, MassBio’s report suggests some progress — but again, that is limited to white women. Women as a whole currently comprise about 52% of the entire Massachusetts biopharma workforce, 46% of executives and 33% of board members.

MassBio has made specific calls to action for its member companies: creating a diversity statement, setting up employee engagement surveys that ask questions about DEI and establishing “diversity dashboards” to measure their own demographics internally. Today, 75% of respondents have a diversity statement, up from 56% in 2021; 50% have a diversity dashboard or scorecard, up from 24% in 2021; and 61% have conducted employee engagement surveys with DEI-specific questions, up from 57% in 2021.

Read the full story in the Boston Business Journal.

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Johns Creek became the first municipality in Georgia to be designated as a gold-level BioReady Community, a distinction based on the city’s readiness to host biotechnology facilities.

The honor was presented to Johns Creek at the 2023 Georgia Life Sciences Summit organized by Georgia Bio, a nonprofit, membership-based organization that promotes the interests and growth of the life sciences industry in Georgia.

Georgia Bio launched the BioReady Community program in Georgia with the support from the nonprofit’s partners at MassBio, a global life sciences and healthcare organization dedicated to advancing Massachusetts’ position in the life sciences.

With a goal of helping local communities connect with leading life sciences industry representatives, Georgia Bio replicated the MassBio rating system program to determine a municipality’s readiness to host biotechnology facilities based on the community’s zoning practices and infrastructure capacity.

Read the full story at AppenMedia.com.

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MassBio CEO and President Kendalle Burlin O’Connell offered her thoughts to GBR as they prepared their USA Life Sciences 2023 report, released earlier this year. The interview was conducted in February 2023 and provided a lookback at 2022 and a preview of the year ahead.

In this print and digital publication, Global Business Reports offers analysis derived from over 80 interviews with the industry’s most insightful, thought-provoking, and authoritative executives across the life sciences value chain, spanning 19 US states, and with firms from three continents with large footprints in America. Importantly, the report features GBR’s assessment of the trends that are likely to drive the industry in the coming months.

From “The Investment Climate: Picking ripe apples: a sweet spot for M&As” editorial:

Early-stage firms seeking investment will have to face increased due diligence from VCs after the “sugar high” experienced in 2020-2021, when several companies went public too soon and without a well-thought-out strategy. Today these firms must focus on finding partners to develop their assets or find them a different home. This makes life harder for pre-revenue life sciences firms that do not yet have clinical data. Christina Bardon, co-managing partner at MPM | BioImpact Capital explained: “In 2020, several companies invested in platforms without necessarily paying attention to reaching clinical milestones. Investors are now more parsimonious and looking for clinical-stage assets and tangible value creation. 2023 is a time to focus on clinical data.”

With unique access to the biotech ecosystem in Massachusetts, Kendalle O’Connell, CEO and president at MassBio, shared investors’ analysis: “Companies will have to be able to give more clinical data to investors to create confidence in their ideas and raise funding in future rounds.”

From “The East and the West: Healthy competition driving progress” editorial:

Massachusetts, home to 18 of the 20 largest global pharma firms, again ranked as a top place among life sciences regions globally in 2022. For the past 15 years, the work done by pharma firms, state authorities, and non-profits to develop the industry has been nothing short of outstanding. Since passing the Massachusetts Life Sciences Initiative in 2008, biopharma employment has almost doubled in the state, with a 96.5% total growth. Surfing on that trend, employment grew by 13% in 2022, with the life sciences industry now employing over 106,000 people. Pharma giants Takeda, Sanofi and Pfizer were the top three employers in the state in 2022, according to figures from MassBio.

Firms in Massachusetts have R&D running through their veins, and this will likely remain what pumps capital into their ventures in the year ahead. The state remains the top NIH-funded state per capita, with US$3.3 billion, while firms in the Boston area received 26% of all VC investment nationally. Massachusetts headquartered firms make up 16% of the US drug development pipeline. Newly promoted MassBio CEO and president Kendalle O’Connell detailed the state’s growth path: “We have seen unprecedented levels of venture capital investment coming into Massachusetts headquartered companies, with nearly US$9 billion of VC investment in 2022 and US$13.6 billion in 2021. In 2022, lab and manufacturing space in Massachusetts totaled approximately 55 million square feet, with 15 million square feet coming online in 2021 alone.”

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The Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, the nation’s oldest biotech trade association, released its 2023 Industry Snapshot on September 6. The report found that biotech and pharmaceutical companies in Massachusetts added more research and development and biomanufacturing jobs than in most other states in 2022.

The biopharma R&D workforce in Massachusetts had a year-over-year growth rate of 8.5% between 2021 and 2022, according to the report. During the same period, the R&D workforce grew by 6.8% in California and Pennsylvania and by 1.9% in New Jersey. Biomanufacturing, meanwhile, grew by 6.3% in Massachusetts, compared with 5.8% in New Jersey, 4.6% in Maryland and 1.8% in North Carolina. 

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The biotech and biopharma ecosystems in Massachusetts have many factors working together to spur growth, Ben Bradford, head of external affairs for Massachusetts Biotechnology Council (MassBio), told BioSpace. One is that the state government tends to support these industries, regardless of which party is in power. This support includes funding for the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, which administers an internship program and gives grants and loans to life sciences companies in the state, among other initiatives, Bradford said.

Another factor is that the nonprofit ecosystem in Massachusetts, including universities, hospitals and healthcare groups, provides strong talent and R&D pipelines. “Nonprofits bring in the National Institutes of Health dollars from the federal government,” Bradford said. Although just 2% of the U.S. population lives in Massachusetts, nonprofit entities in the state received 9% of all NIH funding in 2022. The state ranked third in the country, behind California and New York, in the number of grants approved and the total amount of funds awarded by the NIH.

Pandemic-era expansion created an excess inventory of lab space across Massachusetts, which gives lessees flexibility when choosing a location. Biopharma startups now have 61.9 million square feet of lab space from which they can choose. Projections for expansion during the coming year are between 14 to 17 million square feet.

“The commercial real estate component has been building the space that companies in Massachusetts need to continue to expand, so they can put their VC money toward research and development,” said Bradford.

Read the full story at BioSpace.com.

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Biotech space, for safety reasons, must cycle out 100% of its air every 10 minutes. Weaver said a building’s temperature can be maintained when the outside temperature is down to 20 degrees, but below 20 degrees, the building needs a gas-powered system. He said having systems that can maintain interior temperatures down to negative 4 degrees could add 10% to 15% to a project’s cost.

“The way the code’s written,” said Weaver. “It’s just asking for a technological standard that’s just not ready yet, and there’s going to be some casualties in the period until that technology advances.”

The Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, which is a nonprofit group advocating for life sciences companies and development, said meeting stretch code requirements is not always feasible for life sciences.

“Our members always have sustainability on their minds, including energy efficiency,” MassBio spokesman Ben Bradford said in an emailed statement. “That said, the nature of their life-saving work requires energy consumption that may not yet be feasible through renewable energy resources.”

While stretch codes developments have the option to be gas powered, they must make an effort to add solar power to the development. That is something that Weaver says is difficult because the HVAC requirements on the roof leave little space for solar panels.

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MassBio sees a need to expand the biotech industry into regional clusters outside of the Metro Boston area and is doing all it can to help communities grow these clusters, Bradford said.

“For Worcester, a city looking to further create an environment in which life sciences companies can scale but lacking supply of any move-in ready or planned stock, adding new regulations will only dissuade the development their emerging sector so badly wants,” he said.

Read the full story at wbjournal.com.

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Earlier this year, a group of public officials, scientists, business leaders and community advocates held a secret meeting in Cambridge.

Federal officials were in town, and this group of local leaders was on a mission. They had just a few hours to convince the feds to choose Massachusetts as a hub for the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, or ARPA-H — a new federal initiative to invest in solving big and complex health problems.

The pitch they crafted included the state’s track record for medical innovation in everything from anesthesia and surgery to COVID vaccines. It was delivered directly by Gov. Maura Healey, researchers, investors and others.

Last week, we learned this aggressive strategy paid off. Massachusetts — and specifically, Cambridge’s Kendall Square — will become one of three hubs for ARPA-H.

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“It really is validation,” said Ed Coppinger, head of government affairs at MassBio, “that Massachusetts is the epicenter of bio in the country, if not the world.”

Read the full story at wbur.org.

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A new training program in the life sciences aims to bring more people from diverse backgrounds into biotechnology as the industry’s need to fill jobs increases.

The Bioversity program, a nonprofit offshoot of the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council (MassBio), will be based out of the old Boston Globe headquarters in Dorchester and promises students hands-on experience to help prepare them for lab operations jobs in an eight-week course intended to serve as an alternative to a college degree.

Using a curriculum developed by the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences (MCPHS), with feedback from companies in the industry, Bioversity aims to prepare people for entry-level jobs.

The training program joins at least three other freestanding ones in operation or development designed to diversify the industry’s workforce in the Boston area.

Zach Stanley, executive director of Bioversity, said now is a good time to get into the life sciences.

“The reason you want to do this is the demand for jobs in the biotech industry in Boston and beyond is growing very rapidly,” Stanley said as part of his pitch at an information session for the program Sept. 25. “The opportunity for a good paying job, with full benefits, awaits you upon completion of our program, and that’s really what we’re here for.”

The program will offer opportunities for people who either don’t want to or can’t afford to attend a four-year college the opportunity to develop skills to start a career.

It also offers individuals in dead-end jobs a chance to start a new career, said Andrea Swain, chief impact officer at the Boys and Girls Club of Boston.

“College is becoming just out of the realm of some high school graduates because of the cost factor, the barriers around transportation and cost and navigating being a first-generation student, and so a viable option may be to go into the workforce,” said Swain, who attended the information session with a handful of participants, parents and alumni from Boys and Girls Club programs.

Stanley said the training program aims to draw a diverse selection of students to bolster a growing demand for a growing workforce in the life sciences industry. He called that push “almost purely a numbers game.”

“We should not, as a state or as an industry, be looking towards people moving to Massachusetts to get jobs or otherwise,” Stanley said. “We should be looking first and foremost to talent we know is here already and give them the opportunity and proper training and education really thrive in this industry.”

Read the full story at BayStateBanner.com.

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A new federal health research agency will set up shop in Cambridge with plans to spend billions of dollars to accelerate breakthroughs to vanquish tough-to cure diseases such as cancers and Alzheimer’s.

The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, or ARPA-H, said Tuesday that Cambridge will host the agency’s “investor catalyst” hub, which will work with researchers, entrepreneurs, and financiers to speed the transition of basic research into new technologies and medicines. The announcement follows an intense lobbying effort by Governor Maura Healey’s administration and the state’s congressional delegation, as well as local business and academic leaders.

ARPA-H, proposed by the Biden administration to tackle intractable illnesses, will remain headquartered in the Washington, D.C., area, where its parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, is located. As part of a “hub-and-spoke” structure, a third hub, in Dallas, will focus on patients’ customer experience.

Kendalle Burlin O’Connell, chief executive of the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, noted that cancer and dementia research and drug development — key goals of the new agency — are specialties of the state’s large cluster of hospitals, research labs, and biopharma startups.

“From day one, when he heard of ARPA-H, we knew that Massachusetts would be the best place for a hub,” she said. “This is a testament to the density and robustness of our [life sciences] ecosystem.”

Read the full story at BostonGlobe.com.

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Representatives from MassBio, the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, the University of Massachusetts and more made their case in an open letter last November, noting that the Bay State is currently home to 18 of 20 of the largest biotech and pharmaceutical companies. The state also boasts 56 million square feet of lab and life sciences space and more than 100 colleges and universities, including multiple research hospitals.

Massachusetts Economic Development Secretary Yvonne Hao formalized the argument this spring. Over the course of March and April, she and industry representatives worked to finalize and submit electronic whitepapers, which were due on April 7. Much of the summer has consisted of waiting for the administration’s review.

The investor-focused Cambridge hub is one of three that ARPA-H announced on Tuesday. The agency is also setting up a “customer experience” hub in Dallas and a “stakeholder operations hub” near Washington, D.C., where ARPA-H’s headquarters will also be based.

The Investor Catalyst Hub will focus on helping ARPA-H programs navigate the complexities of the business and regulatory landscape and provide resources to help bring ideas to market, per ARPA-H’s statement.

“Massachusetts plays an outsized role in addressing the world’s unmet medical needs, and the Biden Administration’s decision to locate the Investor Catalyst Hub for ARPA-H here in Cambridge puts the agency in a position to tap into the talent, funding, institutions, and innovation that are our ecosystem’s greatest assets,” MassBio CEO Kendalle Burlin O’Connell said in an email to the Business Journal. “Today, our local biotechs stand ready to compete for the dollars that will help to unlock the cures and therapies that will change the course of human health.”

Read the full story in the Boston Business Journal.

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Massachusetts will host one of three hubs for a new federal agency with at least $1 billion in funding and a mission to accelerate medical breakthroughs.

The mission of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, also known as ARPA-H, is to accelerate medical breakthroughs. It is modeled after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, credited with underlying inventions that led to the internet, GPS and automated voice recognition, among others.

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