Top 10 U.S. Biopharma Clusters 2024

As much as the world has changed over the past 45 years, its leading regions for biotech activity worldwide are the same now as they were nearly a half-century ago, a team of European researchers asserted earlier this year.

In a recent commentary, a group of researchers with academic appointments in marketing, business, and managerial economics analyzed the growth of biotech clusters on a global scale over a timespan of nearly four decades (Looy et al. Growth of biotech clusters over several decades through pioneering, variety and entrepreneurial science. Nat. Biotechnol. 2024: 42: 20–25). The commentary’s corresponding author was Bart Van Looy, PhD, professor of economics and business at KU Leuven and academic dean of Flanders Business School. His co-authors were Grabowska Marcelina and Koenraad Debackere—both of KU Leuven—as well as Vesna Vlaisavljevic of the University of Barcelona and Catherine Lecocq of Ghent University.

Not surprisingly, two of the three largest global clusters between 1978 and 2015 as identified by the researchers were in the United States: “Northern California” (read: San Francisco Bay Area) and “Massachusetts” (read: Boston/Cambridge). The third was Japan’s Southern Kanto region (Tokyo).

What did these regions do right? According to the commentary’s researchers, the three regions:

•  Invested in biotech early. (“At the regional level,” the commentary noted, “pioneering has a long and lasting impact. Our analysis reveals that the impact of early investments in an emerging field such as biotech spans more than three decades.”)
•  Generated science of outstanding quantity and quality. (Scientific excellence was sustained even as the industry matured.)
•  Built networks with partners. (These networks included organizations and individuals outside of the region.)
•  Broadened their clusters beyond anchor businesses. (Each region included organizations besides a single multinational giant.)

The researchers concluded, “Policies aimed at supporting firms when investing in uncertain research and development efforts thus should target a variety and multitude of beneficiaries, entrepreneurial initiatives, and medium-sized or larger companies alike, without neglecting the existential contribution of a vibrant, excellent, internationally connected, and entrepreneurial science base.”

Also not surprisingly, Boston/Cambridge and the San Francisco Bay Area have swapped the top spot over the 10 years that GEN has published annual A-Lists of its nationally cited top 10 U.S. biopharma cluster rankings to indicate which regions are most competitive in efforts to attract life sciences leaders, companies, and institutions.

Van Looy and colleagues based their research into biotech clusters on biotech patent applications filed between 1978 and 2015, as well as on biotech articles published between 1998 and 2015. The researchers reasoned that the data gleaned from patents and papers offered insights into R&D output (innovation) and the scale of activity in specific emerging fields

Like the European researchers, GEN assesses patent activity in ranking the nation’s top biopharma clusters. GEN tallies the number of patent families containing the word “biotechnology” and towns and cities within a given region or state, as contained in the Patent Public Search tool of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

The other four criteria for ranging U.S. biopharma clusters are:

•  NIH funding—Figures for NIH funding were taken from the publicly available NIH RePORT database for the current federal fiscal year through July 1, plus all of fiscal year 2023 (October 1, 2022, through September 30, 2023).
•  Venture capital funding—Figures for all of 2023 and the first half of 2024 as compiled by regional life sciences groups and PitchBook, which joins with the National Venture Capital Association to publish the quarterly Venture Monitor reports.
•  Laboratory space—The total-size-of-market figure, in millions of square feet, as furnished by regional life sciences groups. In each regions that did not compile such information, the figure cited is the highest by any of several commercial real estate companies, including CBRE Group, Colliers, Cushman & Wakefield, JLL, and Newmark.
•  Number of jobs—The preferred sources for job figures were regional life sciences groups. Alternative sources included commercial real estate firms.

1. Boston/Cambridge, MA In Boston, Cambridge, MA, and across Massachusetts, life sciences leaders are waiting for state lawmakers to hash out a reauthorization of the Life Science Initiative, through which the Bay State would continue offering economic incentives to grow the industry. Gov. Maura Healy (D) in February proposed a 10-year, $1 billion reauthorization called Mass Leads. The measure passed the state House of Representatives as proposed, but the state Senate in July chopped the measure to five years and less than half of Healy’s proposed funding. Speaking of incentives, the state-funded Massachusetts Life Sciences Center in February terminated a $1.875 million award given last year to Takeda Pharmaceuticals toward creating and retaining 125 jobs in suburban Lexington, MA. Instead, Takeda in May disclosed plans to eliminate 641 jobs (146 in Lexington, 495 in Cambridge). And in August, Takeda plans to cut another 220 jobs (189 in Cambridge, 31 in Lexington). However, Novo Nordisk, is adding 75 employees in the region, having opened in February the newest space within its U.S. Research and Early Development Hub in the region, an approximately 80,000 square feet site in Lexington housing the company’s Global Nucleic Acid Therapies and Advanced Drug Delivery R&D groups.Boston/Cambridge’s return to the top reflects its top rankings in three of GEN’s five criteria: The region leads the nation in NIH funding with 8,954 awards totaling $5.219 billion; as well as in lab space with 61.9 million square feet, according to the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council or MassBio. Boston/Cambridge is also number-one in venture capital with $7.67 billion in 2023 and $3.04 billion in Q1-Q2 2024 (MassBio). The region places second in patents (23,853 families) but only finishes middle of the pack in employment, placing fifth with 116,937 jobs, according to MassBio.

2. San Francisco Bay Area Upcoming events from BIO and Biotech Showcase™ suggest that San Francisco will again host the annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in January, negating speculation surfacing last year that the annual event would move elsewhere. But the Bay Area’s life-sci picture remains anything but rosy: At least eight companies have cut jobs in the region this year. They range from San Rafael, CA-based BioMarin Pharmaceutical (170 jobs), to South San Francisco’s Senti Biosciences (about 37% of workforce) and Tenaya Therapeutics (about 22% of workforce), to life-sci giants like Bristol Myers Squibb (unknown number; shuttered Cancer Immunology and Cell Therapy Thematic Research Center in Redwood City, CA, in April), Genentech (436 jobs in South San Francisco), Pfizer (52 in South San Francisco), Sanofi (all 100 San Francisco jobs at subsidiary Amunix Pharmaceuticals), and Thermo Fisher Scientific (74 in Petaluma, CA). Not every giant is cutting jobs: Astellas Pharma in May opened a $90 million Innovation Center in South San Francisco to consolidate its Bay Area research, technical operations, medical, and development and commercial units.San Francisco and vicinity regained the top spot on this list last year based on outraising Boston/Cambridge in venture capital. This year the VC rankings were reversed, with San Francisco finishing second with $6.63 billion in 2023 and $3.75 billion in January–June 2024, says BIOCOM California citing PitchBook data. And as VC goes, so too does the “City by the Bay” and its suburbs, which finished second to the Massachusetts cluster this time around despite climbing to the top spot in jobs with 156,454 according to BIOCOM California. The Bay Area also placed second in patents (28,690 families) and lab space (50.6 million square feet, according to Colliers), but fared lower in NIH funding, ranking fourth with 6,547 awards totaling $3.64 billion.

3. BioHealth Capital Region (Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.) The BioHealth Capital Region has generated enough positive news to retain the number-three ranking it earned and celebrated last year. QIAGEN and Frederick County, MD, officials on July 12 announced completion of a 40,000-square-foot expansion of the company’s Frederick, MD, facility, creating a 75,000-square-foot site focused on next-generation sequencing, genomics, clinical healthcare, and forensics. AstraZeneca is investing $300 million in a new manufacturing facility in Rockville, MD, with plans to create 150 new jobs when the site opens in 2026. Across the state line, The University of Virginia is constructing the $300 million Paul and Diane Manning Institute of Biotechnology in Charlottesville; named for chairman and CEO of PBM Capital and his wife. However, Gaithersburg, MD-based Emergent BioSolutions in May announced plans to eliminate 300 jobs and about 85 vacant positions, plus shut down two Maryland sites—its Baltimore-Bayview Drug Substance manufacturing facility and its Rockville Drug Product facility. A third Emergent site, its Baltimore–Camden fill-finish facility, found a buyer in Taiwan-based Bora Pharmaceuticals, which bought the facility for $30 million in June.BioHealth Capital Region leads the nation in patents (73,315 families) thanks to IP powerhouses like Johns Hopkins University, the NIH, and National Library of Medicine. The Maryland-Virginia-D.C. region placed third in NIH funding (5,558 awards totaling $4.342 billion), jobs (136,164 according to BHCR based on data from labor market analytics firm Lightcast) and lab space with 35.9 million square feet according to BHCR based on data from JLL, whose figure includes the 9.2 million square feet of lab space within the NIH Campus headquarters in Bethesda, MD. In venture capital, BHCR cited PitchBook data showing the region climbing three notches year-over-year to fifth with $1.92 billion in 2023 and $1.01 billion in Q1–Q2 2024.

4. New York/New Jersey The New York City Economic Development Corp. is searching for a developer or joint venture to build the planned Science Park and Research Campus (SPARC) campus in Manhattan’s Kips Bay. Up to one million square feet of life-sci space is planned for Hunter College’s Brookdale campus. Deadline for expressions of interest is August 6. In the Hudson Valley suburbs, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals is completing a $1.8 billion, one million-square-foot expansion of its Tarrytown, NY headquarters while in Suffern, NY, Regeneron spent nearly $39 million to buy a former Avon campus where it will base 230 employees, an infectious disease R&D lab, and a cold storage facility. In New Jersey, several large campuses are taking shape including the $731 million HELIX and $750 million Jack and Sheryl Morris Cancer Center, both in New Brunswick. NJ. About 20 miles southwest in Hopewell, NJ, BeiGene is building an $800 million U.S. Manufacturing and R&D Center this year at the Princeton West Innovation Campus.New York/New Jersey ranks a close second to Boston/Cambridge in NIH funding, racking up 9,052 awards totaling $5.098 billion, as well as second in jobs with 149,100, according to Cushman & Wakefield. The region places fifth in lab space with an even 24 million square feet, says Colliers, but finishes sixth in patents (10,474 families) and venture capital with $1.43 billion in 2023 and $1.13 billion in Q1–Q2 2024, as reported by PitchBook.

5. San Diego The host city for this year’s Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO) International Convention had a lot else to celebrate: Element Biosciences in July closed on a $277+ million Series D financing whose purposes include supporting the commercialization of benchtop DNA sequencer AVITI™ and the launch of sequencing/cyto-profiling platform AVITI24™. Mirador Therapeutics, a precision medicine developer focused on immunology and inflammation attracted even more venture capital, more than $400 million in March. Still another homegrown company, Radionetics Oncology, agreed in July to advance its GPCR-targeting small molecule radiopharmaceuticals by partnering with Eli Lilly. Lilly shelled out $140 million upfront and acquired the exclusive right to acquire Radionetics for $1 billion. The deal expands a regional Lilly presence that includes the Lilly Biotechnology Center and a 62,000-square-foot Gateway Labs coworking-accelerator space at Alexandria Real Estate Equities’ One Alexandria Square campus. Two new regional campuses are taking shape: IQHQ is completing a $1.6 billion, 1.7 million square foot downtown Research and Development District (RaDD), while Sterling Bay and Harrison Street are building the $650 million, 500,000-square-foot Pacific Center in Sorrento Mesa. In March, Pfizer Oncology inked a 15-year, 230,000-square-foot lease at Breakthrough Properties’ Torrey View campus, expanding a regional presence that includes a 25-acre, 500,000-square-foot research site in La Jolla.“America’s Finest City” and vicinity host one of the nation’s finest biopharma clusters, climbing to third (from fourth last year) in venture capital with $2.27 billion in 2023 and $2.48 in January–June 2024, says BIOCOM California based on PitchBook data. San Diego maintained its year-ago rankings of fourth in lab space despite the building surge (25.084 million square feet, according to BIOCOM California based on CBRE data), and fifth in patents (13,931 families). The region places seventh in jobs (75,816, according to BIOCOM California), but has dipped to 10th in NIH funding with 2,634 awards totaling $1.631 billion.

6. Greater Philadelphia PIDC, Philadelphia’s public-private economic development corporation, is evaluating proposals for a developer partner to build the Lower Schuylkill Biotech Campus, a $1 billion-plus, up-to-1 million-square-foot biomanufacturing site planned for about 40 acres of the Lower Schuylkill riverfront. PIDC is a partnership of the city government and the Chamber of Commerce for Greater Philadelphia—which announced in June that the region housed 60 of the world’s 500 cell and gene therapy companies, employing 7,000 people. One such company, Spark Therapeutics, is constructing its Gene Therapy Innovation Center on the Drexel University campus in Philadelphia’s University City. 500+ jobs will be based there when it opens in 2026—though Spark began laying off an unspecified number of staffers in July as it pivots to faster pipeline development. In suburban Collegeville, PA, David Werner Real Estate Investments and GreenBarn Investment Group are building The Bridge at Collegeville, adding up to 1.4 million square feet of labs and offices to a 1.9 million-square-foot campus acquired from Pfizer last year for $180 million.Greater Philadelphia’s sharp focus on cell and gene therapy explains in large part why the region has catapulted nicely from ninth last year to fourth this year in venture capital ($3.1 billion in 2023, according to the Chamber, but only $260 million in Q1–Q2 2024, according to PitchBook). Philly and suburbs remain fourth in patents (15,514 families), and sixth in both NIH funding (4,070 awards totaling $2.189 billion) and lab space (23.7 million square feet, according to Select Greater Philadelphia and Colliers). The region’s lowest ranking is in jobs with “more than 50,000,” according to Select Greater Philadelphia.

7. Los Angeles / Orange County, CA University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) got 2024 off to a flying start in January by acquiring the vacant Westside Pavilion mall in Westwood for $700 million. The mall will become the California Center for Immunology, for which Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) announced $200 million in state funding in May. The Center is set to be completed in mid-2027. Ambry Genetics founder Charlie Dunlop in June donated $50 million to the University of California, Irvine, to create an endowed fund designed to provide unrestricted support for academic and research activities at the School of Biological Sciences. The region’s largest biotech Amgen saw its biggest one-day stock gain in 15 years in May after CEO Robert A. Bradway said the company was planning a Phase III trial of MariTide. Bradway said the weight loss drug candidate aced a Phase II trial, though details had yet to be released at deadline.The City of Angels, its namesake Los Angeles County, and surrounding suburban counties still rank in the top half of the list in life-sci employment, though the region has dipped from third to fourth this year with 127,274 jobs, according to statewide industry group BIOCOM California. LA/Orange finish seventh in NIH funding (3,474 awards totaling $2.096 billion), patents (6,019 families), and venture capital ($778.85 million in 2023 and $683.4 million in January–June 2024, according to PitchBook data cited by BIOCOM California), but only eighth in lab space with 12 million square feet according to statewide industry group California Life Sciences, citing data from JLL.

8. North Carolina Novo Nordisk announced plans June 24 for a $4.1 billion second fill-finish plant in Clayton, NC. The company will add 1,000 jobs to its nearly 2,500-person North Carolina workforce, to meet rising demand for its blockbuster obesity and diabetes drugs targeting glucagon-like peptide receptor 1 (GLP-1). Novo Nordisk’s arch-rival Eli Lilly is also growing in the Tar Heel State. On June 14, Gov. Roy Cooper (D) joined Lilly executives in celebrating the opening of a $2 billion-plus Concord, NC, site for manufacturing GLP-1 drugs that will employ 600. Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies is investing $1.2 billion more into the biomanufacturing facility it is constructing in Holly Springs, NC, adding 680 jobs to 725 previously planned. Real estate firm JLL has named Raleigh-Durham the nation’s top biomanufacturing hub, citing the rich history of large-scale biomanufacturing at Research Triangle Park and outlying counties, a critical mass of workers, and R&D from university spinouts: “Bridging the gap is a healthy pipeline of pilot manufacturing real estate with plenty of land, a growing talent base and an increasingly favorable business environment to catalyze the entirety of the drug development life cycle.”North Carolina is fifth in NIH funding (4,239 awards totaling $3.328 billion), and seventh in lab space with 18.2 million square feet according to Colliers, which tallied 600,000 more square feet this year compared with 2023. North Carolina is eighth in patents (5,094 families) and jobs (over 75,000, according to the state-funded North Carolina Biotechnology Center), and ninth in venture capital ($533.45 million in 2023 and $260.778 million in Q1–Q2 2024, as tracked by the Center).

9. Chicagoland Chicago recently saw two artificial intelligence-based companies reap the rewards of public and private investment, respectively. AI platform developer Tempus AI raised an estimated $371.5 million in net proceeds when it launched its initial public offering (IPO) on June 14. Two months earlier, spatial AI biomarker company Nucleai secured $14 million from investors led by M Ventures—the corporate venture capital arm of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany—toward further deploying its AI algorithms for enrolling patients in clinical trials. The investment brought Nucleai’s total funding to $60 million. Trammell Crow has been busy, developing the 1.8 million square foot, mixed use Fulton Park Campus after attracting a $250 million Chan Zuckerberg Biohub to its nearby Fulton Labs campus. Trammell Crow is also completing the 175,000-square-foot Evanston (IL) Labs, set to open later this year, and Hyde Park Labs, a 302,000-square foot-commercial lab building being partnered with Beacon Capital Partners.The Windy City and its suburbs continue to climb in life-sci employment, reaching sixth with 91,000 jobs according to statewide industry group Illinois Biotechnology Innovation Organization (iBio). However, the region ranks ninth in NIH funding (3,535 awards totaling $1.811 billion) and patents (4,705 families) and finishes 10th in lab space (2.035 million square feet, according to iBio, though another 1.14 million is either set to be completed this year or planned for 2026 delivery) and venture capital ($166 million in 2023 and $172 million in January–June 2024, as reported by iBio).

10. Seattle and Greater Puget Sound Months after completing its $43 billion purchase of Bothell, WA-based Seagen, Pfizer in March halted construction of a $350 million manufacturing plant the antibody-drug conjugate developer was building in Everett, WA, and shifted the work to Sanford, NC. Better news has followed more recently: In Seattle’s South Lake Union, Alexandria Real Estate Equities has resumed construction on the 11-story, 227,000-square-foot 701 Dexter Avenue North, set to open “2025/26.” Immunome inked a lease for a new 29,344-square-foot headquarters in Bothell, with potential to more than double that space. InduPro, based in Seattle (and Cambridge, MA), garnered $85 million in Series A financing, while Vilya, a spinout of the University of Washington’s Institute for Protein Design, completed an expanded $71 million Series A. In May, Vertex expanded its kidney drug pipeline by acquiring Seattle-based Alpine Immune Sciences for $4.9 billion, while Bruker expanded in spatial biology by buying NanoString Technologies for $392.6 million via bankruptcy court auction.Seattle and the greater Puget Sound rank eighth in NIH funding (2,486 awards totaling $1.842 billion) and venture capital ($854.5 million in 2023 and $334 million in Q1–Q2 2024, according to statewide industry group Life Science Washington). The region ranks ninth in lab space (8.5 million square feet, according to JLL data cited by Life Science Washington), and 10th in both patents (4,783 families) and jobs (46,540 according to Life Science Washington’s Economic Impact Report released in April but based on 2022 data).