Boston Business Journal, March 2022
We have seen impressive successes in biotechnology in New England, most recently with Covid-19 vaccine development. However, its rapid growth faces barriers to expansion including talent shortages, desperate scrambles to secure and retain employees, and job searches that go beyond our region. As we seek to build back better from the pandemic, we have opportunities for economic growth in areas in the Northeast that have been historically left behind.
Kickstarted by an initiative signed by then-Gov. Patrick in 2008, Massachusetts began building its biotech community with a spending commitment of $1 billion over 10 years. Boston/Cambridge is now considered one of the largest hubs of biotechnology research and discovery. The industry is growing at such a rate that in Massachusetts alone, companies anticipate 40,000 new jobs over the next three years.
We see biopharmaceutical manufacturing (biomanufacturing) as a pathway to increasing New England’s prominence in the biotech industry, by expanding its reach beyond Boston and Cambridge and into western Massachusetts, Maine, and Rhode Island.
