Reasonable_Move9518 t1_ixkmqww wrote
Reply to comment by Vassukhanni in The lack of homes could strangle our life sciences industry: Why the concentration of biopharma in Cambridge and Boston would ratchet up costs, exacerbate the housing crisis, and pitch the region from its throne. by writethefuture3
Scientist here. Biotech didn't really "move" here... Boston was one of the first places where the type of businesses we now call biotech were invented in the late 70's and early 80's. It's just grown substantially since then, especially in the last 5-10 years.
too-cute-by-half t1_ixkqdtn wrote
The recent growth was also stoked by Gov. Patrick's Life Sciences Initiative, a $1B state investment from 2008-2018 through tax incentives and low interest loans.
Reasonable_Move9518 t1_ixkrscv wrote
Definitely helped but not the full story. The entire biotech sector has been surging for 5-10 years, a combo of a build up of capital in the low-interest rate era and multiple quite highly promising new therapeutic approaches in several disease areas. A little less clear now that interest rates are actually a thing and investors care about things like turning a profit, but the fundamentals are likely pretty strong going forward.
It's not just Boston (and thus not the result of any state investment/initiative); all the traditional biotech hubs have had huge growth, though since some of this has been masked because some biotech hubs (Bay Area, Seattle) overlap with Tech hubs which have grown even more.
Vassukhanni t1_ixknbrx wrote
Yeah hence the quotation marks. The Whitehead institute was founded in the early 1980s.
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