Bio Boom: Dallas-Fort Worth Is Emerging As A Hub For Biotech And Life Sciences

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Dallas-Fort Worth leads the nation in population and job growth, and the region was No.1 in both categories for 2019 and for the entire 2010 decade, for good reason.

Considered a premier location in the U.S. for headquarters, manufacturers, and logistics, DFW is home to an enviable roster of companies across major sectors like aerospace, automotive, data, energy, engineering, insurance, finance, food and beverage, retail, semiconductors, telecommunications, and transportation.

Eight Fortune 500 companies have decided to move headquarters to DFW since 2004. The most recent is Charles Schwab, whose move to Westlake from San Francisco will take effect Jan. 1, 2021.

DFW is also out front with new and emerging sectors. Artificial intelligence, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, big data, cybersecurity, and distributed ledger technology companies and jobs are here, and growing. DFW has it all. Almost.

You have not seen Dallas at or near the top of any list of “best cities” or “best places for” when the ranking is based on life sciences or biotechnology.  Chances are the City is not on the list at all. Boston, San Francisco, San Diego, Washington D.C., Raleigh-Durham, New York, New Jersey, and a few others share that spotlight.

More than most sectors, biotech companies cluster when choosing where to build facilities, invest and create jobs, even if costs are higher. Boston, San Francisco, and the others offer the established and branded aggregate of great research universities, existing and significant biotech and life science companies, a big talent pool, lab space, patent generation, and funding from venture capital firms or the National Institutes of Health.

Yet in recent years, the Dallas Regional Chamber has led bids that advanced DFW as a finalist for new biotechnology manufacturing facilities by Genentech, Novartis, and a few others. DFW was in the game on the strength of overall attributes as a great place to do business and a few stellar centers of biotech excellence like Alcon in Fort Worth and UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, the only academic medical center in the world to serve as home to six Nobel Laureates.

With a funding level of about $470 million annually, UT Southwestern Medical Center is a shining star. UT Southwestern conducts research and launches companies across a variety of fields including cancer, heart disease, and neuroscience; as well as training 3,600 medical professionals each year. Yet DFW was not selected. The biotech ecosystem was not as deep or evident compared to the winning locations. Now that’s changing quickly, for the better.

On Sept. 22, 2020,  biotech industry leader BioLabs announced that it is locating its first central U.S. location in  Dallas. BioLabs provides lab space and wrap-around services to incubate and accelerate biotech. BioLabs will operate in a 37,000 square-foot flexible life science coworking facility at Pegasus Park, developed by J. Small Investments, partnering with Lyda Hill Philanthropies. Pegasus Park is just north of downtown Dallas and is within walking distance of UT Southwestern Medical Center, a collaborator on the Park. BioLabs’ other locations are in hotspots like Boston, New York, San Diego, and Raleigh-Durham; places where, for years, Dallas entrepreneurs, scientists, and researchers sometimes had to go to launch their enterprises.

Companies like Alcon, Astra Zeneca, Peloton Therapeutics, Reata Pharmaceuticals, and Taysha Gene Therapies are in Dallas-Fort Worth, working on eye care, hyperkalemia, cancer, kidney disease, and diseases of the central nervous system. Other science in the region is focused on HIV, muscular dystrophy, brain research, and more. The University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth is conducting research in forensic genetics and Alzheimer’s. Texas A&M’s College of Dentistry in Dallas is nationally recognized for oral health and craniofacial research. As the region grows in population and diversity, researchers will be increasingly attracted here for clinical trials.

There are more than 60 companies and 27,000 jobs in biotechnology and life sciences in DFW. McKesson, a Fortune 10 company and the nation’s largest pharmaceutical distributor, is now headquartered in Irving, for good reason. Dallas Fort Worth International Airport boasts a new 37,000-square-foot cold chain storage facility. It allows the refrigerated storage and rapid delivery to and from the region of temperature and time-sensitive pharmaceuticals and therapies.

There is a lot of runway in the biotechnology sector in DFW, and the assets and reputation are building in a positive direction. Objective third parties are taking note. In an October 2020 life science cluster report by CBRE, DFW was ranked 6th on a list of top ten emerging life science clusters in the U.S. Biotechnology is alive and growing in DFW.

 

Source: Dallas Innovates

 

South Florida’s Largest Health System Creates 200 Jobs With New Medical Center

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Baptist Health South Florida opened a 112,000-square-foot outpatient medical center in Plantation, its largest facility in Broward County.

The nonprofit is creating 200 jobs in the facility at 1228 S. Pine Island Road, spokeswoman Georgi Morales Pipkin said, and hire additional people as services expand.

The facility’s slate of services includes urgent care, family medicine, diagnostic imaging, cardiology, cancer care, orthopedics, physical therapy, and outpatient surgery.

 

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Real Estate

Texas Is ‘Going Big’ In Biopharma

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Texas wants to get the word out: It’s not just for oil and pipelines anymore.

The Lone Star State is a rapidly emerging biopharma hub, with more than just a lone focus on oncology. Houston and Austin are home to some of the top up-and-coming biopharma companies, and real estate powerhouses like Hines are anchoring major new developments with them.

Ridgeline Therapeutics is one such company, established in 2012 and spun out of technology invented by founder and CEO Stan Watowich at the University of Texas Medical Branch. Ridgeline develops small molecule inhibitors of nicotinamide N-methyltransferase (NNMT) to reverse Type 2 diabetes, obesity, muscular dystrophies and sarcopenia (age-related muscle degeneration).

During the past year, the company has begun to ramp up, hiring, applying for funding, developing the program and advancing projects closer to IND filing and clinical trials. How has their residence within JLABS@TMC, part of the Johnson & Johnson Innovation-JLABS incubator ecosystem, helped during this year of rapid acceleration?

“Working in Houston, for a biotech company, I think is great,” Watowich said. “The ecosystem, it’s not small, but it’s not out of control, so you can actually get to know many of the other companies, the other CEOs, see what they’re up to, share ideas, thoughts…the even bigger thing is you have access to all of these academic labs.”

Texas, and Houston in particular, has certainly caught the attention of the real estate development market. Audrey Symes, Director of Research, Healthcare, Life Sciences and Advisory at JLL, an American commercial real estate services company, explains why the city is at the top of their up-and-coming markets list.

“There are a couple markets that are right at the gate, ready to go, but I would say that the number one that is really emergent right now is Houston,” Symes said. “Houston has an amazing network of both medical practitioners and incubators, universities such as Baylor [The Baylor College of Medicine], the Texas Medical Center, and MD Anderson I think is the premier cancer research hospital in the US if not the world. So Houston has been really at the precipice of rising into the next rank for quite some time.”

Academic institutions rounding out the illustrious network include Rice University, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston,  Texas A&M University, and The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.

“You have a lot of idea flow coming out of this, and a lot of people thinking about starting companies,” Watowich explained.

With the commanding presence of the MD Anderson Cancer Center, the largest cancer center in the U.S., and one of the most preeminent in the world, the assumption would be that oncology is the state’s number one focus. According to Watowich, it is only at the center of a wide range of therapeutic passions:

“I would say oncology is definitely a strength in the medical center,” said Watowich. “Because you have MD Anderson, you have the Baylor college of medicine, you have some of the hospitals with their specialized care. But I would say neurological diseases are a strength, metabolic diseases are a strength, muscular diseases are a strength…it’s hard to say where there’s not a strength.”

Hines is a privately owned global real estate investment, development, and management firm traditionally known for its office spaces. The company has been diversifying significantly during the past decade, and two of their key focus areas – life sciences and senior living– mirror two of society’s biggest current priorities: healthcare and the rapidly aging population.

In July, Hines finalized a deal with 2ML Real Estate Interests to build a mixed-use life sciences and technology-based development called Levit Green, next to the Texas Medical Center. The company plans to break ground on the phase I building in the third quarter of 2021 and complete construction in late 2022.

“It’s not often that an organization can have the opportunity to develop 50 plus acres adjacent to the largest medical center on the planet. That opportunity came along, and we thought it was absolutely intuitive that you could marry up that type of opportunity next to something like the Texas Medical Center,” said John Mooz, a senior managing director, and market head of Houston/Austin/San Antonio at Hines.

For industry and real estate developers alike, the cost of building, and cost of living can often make the difference when deciding where to locate.

“In our trying to understand what the best end-users are for Levit Green, I do think they will be both organically from here, but also locating from either coast where among other things, it’s expensive to build relative to Houston,” Mooz said. “You have gross rates that top $100 psf, and Houston can be almost half of that. And when you’re looking at a company with early-stage funding, that can be a huge difference. So I would argue that Houston can attract top talent and top organizations with an incredibly affordable quality of life, and strong diverse, cultural offerings. With the global oncology pharmaceutical market projected to be worth approximately $200 billion by 2023, Houston is primed to move to the top of any emerging life sciences cluster list. That’s a pretty strong trajectory in a place that spends a lot of time studying cancer. You combine it next to a medical center that has over 9,200 beds, and we have, by anyone’s count, somewhere in the order of 1100-1200 clinical trials going on right now.”

For all of its merits, Texas is still growing into the biopharma mentality when it comes to capital investment.

“Where Texas really falls behind is capital,” Watowich said. “It’s not that they don’t have money…most of the money is from pipeline and it’s hard to get them to understand that investing in biotech per se isn’t really that different from doing a very deep offshore oil well. The risks are comparable, the timeline’s comparable, and the money’s comparable.”

Watowich is working with other Houston and Texas leaders to launch the Accelerator for Cancer Therapeutics. This Accelerator will assist entrepreneurs aiming to turn their research discoveries into clinical-stage biotech companies supported by forward-thinking investors and non-dilutive funding.

“People need to be willing and accepting of taking risks. And culturally, that doesn’t happen everywhere,” said Travis McCready, Executive Director, U.S. Life Sciences Markets at JLL. “The three mega markets that exemplify this are greater Boston, the Bay area, and San Diego. They (Houston) have a really glowing and exciting creative scene, and I like the creative economy as a measure and metric of risk.”

“The other key for Texas is an injection of privately-led development dedicated to the life sciences market, Mooz said. “Texas Medical Center, I believe is the eighth largest business district in the United States, and the work and the development that’s gone on there is astounding. It’s mostly by in-place organizations and not privately-led development, and that’s what’s been missing. I think what we really need is purpose-built facilities to accommodate all of that R&D, and that’s what we’re trying to answer.”

 

Source: BioSpace