NO TIME TO COAST
The Healey administration prepares to roll out ‘Life Sciences 3.0’ to build on sector’s success
Governor Maura Healey’s expected bill next year to fuel life sciences growth will look different from initiatives championed by past administrations, focusing on building a blue-collar workforce, boosting biomanufacturing, and solving big health care problems.
The state’s first life sciences initiative was launched by former Governor Deval Patrick in 2008 with $1 billion allocated by the Legislature over 10 years. By providing grants and tax breaks to companies that set up shop, expanded, or created jobs in Massachusetts, it cemented the state’s standing as a global industry hub. It was extended under Patrick’s successor, Charlie Baker, in 2018, with another $500 million.
But the money runs out next year. And with 18 of the world’s top 20 drugmakers now operating in the state, the Healey proposal — dubbed Life Sciences 3.0 — is likely to offer a different mix of incentives to encourage drug companies that already do research in Massachusetts to make their medicines here, too. That, in turn, would provide jobs for blue-collar workers without four-year college degrees.
Administration officials have also said they’d like to expand the reach of the biotech sector, now clustered in and around Cambridge and Boston, to other parts of the state.
And taking a page from a new federal agency backing health care “moon shots,” administration officials would fund pilot programs that would team drug and device makers with hospitals and health insurers to close health equity gaps, treat mental illness, and tackle intractable diseases.
The challenge for state leaders, Yvonne Hao, the Massachusetts secretary of economic development, said in an interview,
is, “How we solve these big problems and create lots of great jobs and growth and companies for Massachusetts while we do that.”
State officials are expected to submit the Life Sciences 3.0 bill to the Legislature in the early months of 2024, giving lawmakers time to approve it before their session ends in July. Many of the bill’s details, along with the funding request, are still being sorted, Hao said.
“Massachusetts is starting from a very strong point,” she said. “We proved during the pandemic that we are the world leader in life sciences. We pioneered the COVID testing rollouts, we pioneered the COVID vaccine rollout. ... [But] this is not a time to rest and just kind of coast.”
The administration’s vision and priorities were laid out in a broader economic development plan signed by the governor and filed with the Legislature on Dec. 12 after a series of feedback sessions across the state. The plan lists life sciences and health care as key sectors, along with advanced manufacturing, robotics, and artificial intelligence.
It’s too soon to say if state lawmakers will endorse the contours of Life Sciences 3.0 outlined in the economic plan, or approve another round of funding amid revenue shortfalls and other spending priorities, including a growing demand for shelter space.
State Senate President Karen Spilka and House Speaker Ron Mariano declined requests to discuss the life sciences initiative last week. The legislative leaders will review the bill when it’s filed by the governor, according to statements from their spokespeople.
Healey has hinted at the direction of Life Sciences 3.0 for much of the past year, saying Massachusetts hopes to expand training and apprentice programs to give workers without advanced degrees a pathway into the industry. A growing number of biomanufacturing plants being built or planned will require more blue-collar workers.
“We want to broaden the reach of the life sciences in Massachusetts,” Healey told the Biotechnology Innovation Organization last June. “We want to open it up to more high-school graduates by providing in-demand skills, good job opportunities, and meaningful careers.”
Industry representatives, meanwhile, have met regularly with state officials crafting the bill and say they’re eager to work with the administration and other health care sectors. But they’re also hoping the state will extend tax credits and other incentives to growing companies administered by the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, a quasi-public agency created by the Patrick administration.
Ben Bradford, head of external affairs at the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, said his trade group is “fully in agreement” with the larger scope of the initiative described in the economic development plan. “If this is done correctly, it would have a big impact not only in Massachusetts but on health and health equity globally,” he said.
Creating multi-disciplinary teams to solve pressing problems is modeled on the approach of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, a new federal agency tasked with spawning transformative “moon shots” to cure diseases and improve health. In September, the agency, known as ARPA-H, designated Cambridge as its “investor catalyst” hub, working to transition basic research into new technologies and medicines.
Hao said state officials have already met with ARPA-H executive director Renee Wegrzyn, and some of her program managers and hope to collaborate with their efforts. But while the federal agency will work with researchers, entrepreneurs, and financiers nationally, Hao said, the state will tap health care players in Massachusetts to work together to find new ways to attack mental health, obesity, or cancer.
“You can have the best drugs in the world,” said Hao. “But if hospitals don’t know how to deploy them, and if insurance companies aren’t reimbursing for them, it’s not going to have the impact that we want.”
Measuring the success of these efforts will be more challenging than simply tallying the jobs generated by companies tax credits. But Hao, an economist by training who’s spent most of her career in business, said “I don’t believe in squishy” when assessing a program’s results.
“I’m a big believer that we have to have metrics and data,” she said. “This is taxpayer money. We want to make sure we get the biggest bang for the buck for the state on every taxpayer dollar we spend.”