College students looking to create anything from new medicines to the perfect rice after they graduate should look no further than the Green Line. Biotechnology is big in Boston, and hundreds of companies have relocated to the area in recent years.
The companies, whose scientists study biological processes to treat disease or improve food production, have enlivened an otherwise dull economy, and they have put Boston on the national stage.
Massachusetts has the largest concentration of biotechnology companies in the world, according to Vicki Greene, spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council.
The commonwealth has seen a rise in job growth from the expanding biotechnology sector, according to a brochure from the Boston Redevelopment Authority.
“Half of the job increase between 1996 and 2001 in Massachusetts is represented by biotechnology,” according to the BRA.
To prepare the city for the burst of highly specialized jobs and to capitalize on the chance to bring economic vitality and national respect to Boston, Mayor Thomas Menino has established an agency to “bring biotechnology and life science companies to the city of Boston,” said Glen Comiso, head of the initiative, called LifeTech.
“The mayor is excited about it,” Comiso said. “This is an industry that’s saved lives. [It’s] one of the few industries that’s fast-growing and provides good jobs.”
Comiso said the city’s goal was to bring 10,000 biotechnology jobs to the city by 2010.
“Boston does well,” Comiso said, “but the goal is to do better.”
The numerous hospitals and laboratories in Boston, as well as institutions like BioSquare, a Boston University-owned complex with laboratories and offices, attract biotechnology companies to the city.
Comiso said many companies have chosen Boston because the city often meets the special needs of a biotechnology company.
“Culturally, it’s a great place to be,” especially for foreigners, Comiso said. “Boston is the closest large U.S. city to Europe.”
The European flavor of the city appeals to European companies like Novartis, which recently moved to Boston.
Comiso said biotechnology companies are also “looking for a quality workforce, proximity to universities, hospitals and other biotech companies and a fast speed-to-site move,” which is a quick, painless relocation of the company and its facilities.
While companies might easily find enough qualified workers in the city, they might find relocating difficult and time consuming, he said.
“[Companies] perceive the permitting process to be long,” Comiso said. “For biotechnology companies, two years is too long.”
Because of the time needed to acquire permits and the limited amount of land in the city, many companies move to other parts of Massachusetts or down south – particularly North Carolina.
“They have a lot more land,” Comiso said, referring to non-urban areas outside Boston.
To help foster the industry’s growth, LifeTech will meet with companies and “sell them on Boston,” Comiso said.
The goal is to be “more active and aggressive,” he said.
LifeTech will directly contact various companies and hold conferences in an attempt to convince them to move to Boston.
Comiso said he hopes LifeTech will serve to “link these companies to parts of the city” like Allston -because it is close to Harvard facilities – Charlestown and BioSquare.
“We’ll provide a single point of contact” to the companies, he said, to guide them through the relocation.
LifeTech will also support academic institutions that will help students develop the specialized skills needed to compete in the growing industry.
Comiso cited CityLab, an educational program housed at the Boston University Medical Campus, as an example of the kind of training programs he would like to see develop.
CityLab was created in 1992 to teach middle school students how to perform biological experiments. The program teaches Boston-area children on its medical center campus and sends vans equipped with lab equipment to schools all over Eastern Massachusetts, said program director Don DeRosa.
“We work with Boston schools to expose them to biotechnology and to show them what they can aspire to,” he said.
Derosa said he hopes to “demystify” an often intimidating science.
Most students “don’t know what’s behind the doors of a biotechnology company,” he said.
The city will also encourage programs to train workers with high school degrees to do “entry-level” laboratory work.
Comiso said such programs have helped people move out of blue-collar manufacturing jobs and into “labs developing cell cultures.”
Boston-area universities play an important role in research and development, the first phase of biotechnology-related manufacturing, said Greene, the spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council.
“If they want to stay close [to the sites of research and development], they’ll look at Boston,” she said.
One BU student who has tapped into Boston’s unique position is Keith Figioli, an MBA candidate and president of the Boston University Biotechnology Association. Figioli said he has always been fascinated with the innovations and developments made in biotechnology.
“It’s part of my career and it’s always been a passion for me,” he said.
Figioli said he hopes to carve out a career in the business side of the industry and manage companies, oversee mergers and make biotechnology companies more profitable.
“Biotechnology [companies] start research-oriented,” Figioli said. “And they have to bring business people.”
He said scientists often need help to turn a minute discovery in a test tube into a marketable product that can save lives.
A scientist might discover “some chemical that has some type of reaction with a form of cancer,” Figioli said.
“They then go to an animal model,” and then a human model, he said, testing the new chemical on an animal to see if the same reaction occurs before eventually testing on humans.
Small biotechnology companies may not have the funds to move the experiment to the animal or human level, so they ask hospitals, schools or larger companies to fund their experiments.
Scientists might say, “We’ll give you the rights [of the discovery], and we’ll give you royalties if it becomes successful,” Figioli said.
Figioli added Boston was an ideal place for a job in biotechnology, in either management or science.
“The amount of investment and opportunities is enormous in Boston,” he said. “There’s an infusion of biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies coming to tap into the research done in the city.”