Behind The Sound Bite
The Marlborough Innovation Summit, hosted by the Marlborough Economic Development Corp. in late October, basically turned out to be an advertisement for the commonwealth’s biotech cluster. Perhaps that shouldn’t be surprising given the keynote speaker of the event: Robert Coughlin, president of the Cambridge-based Massachusetts Biotechnology Council. Coughlin, a former state economic development official and lawmaker, said biotech employment has grown 52.5 percent since 2001 and that “no other place in the world can say that.” Here’s a closer look at that statement.
How much has biotech employment grown in the last decade?
The percentage Coughlin cited could be larger. According to the MassBio website, employment in the combined biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry grew more than 60 percent from 2000 to 2009. There were 29,046 people employed in the combined industries in 2000 and 46,553 in 2009, representing a 60.2 percent increase.
How are Bay State biotech companies doing in attracting venture capital funding?
According to MassBio, quite well. Massachusetts firms attracted 26 percent of all biotechnology venture capital funding in the United States in the first half of 2010, up from 22.8 percent in 2009 and 14.7 percent in 2005.
What about National Institutes of Health financing?
Massachusetts is home to the top five NIH-funded hospitals in the country: Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Children’s Hospital Boston. NIH funding to Massachusetts institutions grew more than 25 percent from 2008 to 2009 to more than $2.5 billion, about 11 percent of all NIH research funds.
How does Central Massachusetts fit in with the biotech community?
Central Massachusetts has five of the 22 communities in the state that are considered “platinum” quality for being BioReady, the top MassBio designation for a community’s readiness to host a biotech company: Devens, Framingham, Grafton, Westborough and Worcester.
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