Contract development and manufacturing organizations (CDMOs) provide outsourcing options to biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, helping them advance their drugs from the laboratory to the clinic. Sounds simple. However, CDMOs are always evolving, which means assessments of the CDMO sector are complicated.

Recent developments in the CDMO sector include pandemic-driven demand fluctuations and supply chain disruptions, private equity–driven dealmaking and consolidation, and business model shifts. (These shifts reflect an interest in exploring new product categories, in offering end-to-end services, and in cultivating more lasting relationships with clients.) With all these developments, is it possible to venture any general statements about the CDMO sector?

One thing we can say is that the CDMO sector is poised for growth—at least according to market research firms. For example, in May, Grand View Research issued a report projecting that the global CDMO market will expand at a compound annual growth rate of 6.1% over eight years, from $135.85 billion last year to $232.59 billion by 2030.

The report also noted that in 2022, oncology drugs accounted for the largest share of CDMO activity, 35% ($47.684 billion). Moreover, according to Grand View Research, the oncology drug segment is expected to outgrow the overall CDMO industry with a CAGR of 7.4%–which would bring oncology CDMO activity by 2030 to $90.66 billion. This growth reflects the interest biopharmaceutical companies have in meeting rising demand for new oncology drugs as cancer becomes more prevalent worldwide.

Another thing we can say is that positive views on the CDMO market are not limited to market researchers. Such views are also available from recruitment firms in the life sciences industry. For example, Michael Selwood, a consultant at Mantell Associates, has observed that there is a trend toward greater demand for the services provided by CDMOs. He has suggested that this trend is being driven by six factors: growing complexity of drug development, cost containment and efficiency, focus on core competencies, increasing pipeline of biologics and personalized medicine, globalization and emerging markets, and COVID-19 pandemic impact.

Finally, we can say that CDMOs themselves see opportunities ahead. For example, the CDMO companies in this article are demonstrating their optimism through investments in new technologies and in new and expanded facilities, as well as through commitments to ambitious joint ventures.

These companies populate GEN’s first A-List of Contract Development and Manufacturing Organizations. It is, in fact, a “top 10” list, one in which the CDMOs are ranked by their 2022 revenues—as disclosed by the companies in regulatory filings or in responses to GEN queries.

Details about the top 10 CDMOs are provided in the list that accompanies this text. Besides naming a CDMO and citing its 2022 revenue, each item in the list indicates where the CDMO is headquartered. Finally, each item notes a few selected news developments.

1. Lonza Group
Basel, Switzerland
CHF 6.223 billion ($6.970 billion)

• Joined with Vertex Pharmaceuticals to announce plans for a 130,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Portsmouth, NH, for Vertex’s type 1 diabetes cell therapies.
• Agreed to acquire Amsterdam-based Synaffix for €100 million ($107 million) in upfront cash and up to €60 million ($64 million) in milestone payments, in a deal intended to strengthen Lonza’s bioconjugates offering.
• Launched a partnership with ABL Bio focused on developing and manufacturing ABL’s new bispecific antibody for immuno-oncology and neurodegenerative diseases.

2. Thermo Fisher Scientific
Waltham, MA
$6.967 billion¹

• Announced a next-generation platform of Dynabeads that is intended to accelerate cell therapy manufacturing.
• Opened a sterile fill-finish facility in Singapore.

3. Catalent
Somerset, NJ
FY 2023 Revenues: $4.276 billion²

• Avoided a proxy battle from Elliott Investment Management by agreeing to add four new independent directors supported by the activist investor.
• Announced that new executive chair John Greisch will head a new committee created to review Catalent’s business, strategy and operations, and capital-allocation priorities. (The agreement is intended to reverse a stock price plunge that sent Catalent’s stock skidding 48% from $92.28 to $47.81 the day Catalent and Elliott came to terms.)

4. WuXi Biologics
Wuxi, China
RMB 15.269 billion ($2.108 billion)

• Announced that it will spin off WuXi XDC Cayman, which originated as a joint venture with Wuxi STA to provide bioconjugate services.
• Announced plans to expand its capacity for drug substance and drug product in Germany, in part by doubling the capacity of its drug substance facility in Wuppertal from 12,000 L to 24,000 L.

5. Samsung Biologics
Incheon, South Korea
KRW 2.338 trillion ($1.773 billion)

• Announced full completion of its Bio Campus I, which offers a capacity of 604,000 L, and a planned expansion of Bio Campus II, which is designed to begin operations in 2025.
• Announced two manufacturing deals with Pfizer totaling $897 million to produce biosimilars with oncology, inflammation, and immunotherapy indications through 2029.
• Announced a $390.9 million drug production deal with Novartis, expanding on an $81 million contract signed last year.

6. Siegfried
Zofingen, Switzerland
CHF 1.23 billion ($1.377 billion)

• Acquired a 95% stake in DiNAMIQS, a Swiss CDMO focused on developing and manufacturing viral vectors. (Siegfried is upgrading DiNAMIQS’s capabilities to commercial scale by building a GMP-compliant facility set to start operations in 2025 with flexible capacities of up to 500 L.)
• Opened a Development Center for Drug Products in Barcelona, Spain.
• Broke ground on a CHF 25 million ($28 million) R&D Center for Drug Substances in Evionnaz, Switzerland.

7. Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies
College Station, TX
Fujifilm Tokyo, Japan
¥ 194.2 billion ($1.314 billion)³

• Named Lars Petersen the new president and CEO. (Peterson was previously chief operating officer of the Fujifilm Diosynth site in Hillerød, Denmark, and head of its large-scale strategic business unit.)
• Created a new Strategic Business Unit (SBU) to offer services and manufacturing capacities tailored to support large- or small-scale biopharma clients.

8. Recipharm
Stockholm, Sweden
€1.227 billion ($1.314 billion)

• Announced that it will help Barcelona-based Ahead Therapeutics develop its lead pipeline candidate, a treatment for myasthenia gravis.
• Agreed to provide analytical and process development capabilities to support toxicology studies, as well as GLP manufacturing of lipid nanoparticles to encapsulate the active pharmaceutical ingredient, an antigen peptide.
• Opened a new analytical lab in Bengaluru, India, designed to enhance its global testing capabilities for nitrosamines, extractables and leachables, and elemental impurity testing.
• Arranta Bio subsidiary partnered with MIT to develop a continuous manufacturing technology for mRNA therapeutics.

9. Boehringer Ingelheim
Ingelheim, Germany
€1.024 billion ($1.097 billion)⁴

• Broke ground in May on a €285 million ($305 million) Chemical Innovation Plant at its headquarters. (Operations are set to begin in 2026. Manufacturing processes are to be developed for producing active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and drugs for clinical trials.)
• Celebrated its new €350 million ($374.5 million), 34,500 square meter (371,355 square-foot) Biologicals Development Center in Biberach an der Riß, Germany, where 500-plus employees will research and develop antibodies and therapeutic proteins.

10. MilliporeSigma
Burlington, MA
Merck Darnstadt, Germany
€956 million ($1.024 million)⁵

• Announced a $25 million expansion of its Lenexa, KS, facility that will add 98,000 square feet of laboratory and production space for manufacturing cell culture media. Lenexa joins dry powder cell culture media manufacturing sites in Nantong, China, and Irvine, Scotland.
• Announced it is stepping up biosafety testing in two sites in Scotland (Glasgow and Stirling) through a €35 million ($37.5 million) expansion that is projected to create nearly 500 jobs.

References

1. Revenues reflect Life Science Services sector, which includes CDMO and contract testing services.

2. Revenue reflects figure for Biopharma Contract Manufacturing operations, furnished by the company as part of its annual reports.

3. Figure is the sum of Q1-Q4 fiscal year 2022 quarterly revenue figures for the “Bio CDMO” business within the Healthcare segment of Fujifilm Holdings Corp., whose subsidiaries include CDMO Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies.  Fujifilm operates on a fiscal year that runs from April 1 of the named fiscal year to March 31. FY 2022 covers the 12 months starting April 1, 2022, and ending March 31, 2023.

4. Catalent operates on a fiscal year that ends June 30. Figure reflects net revenues for the 12 months ending June 30, 2023.

5. Revenue figure reflects the approximately 30% share of revenues generated by the Pharma Services business of Thermo Fisher’s Laboratory Products and Biopharma Services segment, according to a pie chart presented at the company’s Investor Day presentation on May 24. Pharma Services includes Patheon, which Thermo Fisher acquired in 2017 for $7.2 billion. 

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Last month, short seller Jonathan Litt’s Land & Buildings Investment Management published a white paper explaining its short position in the nation’s largest life-sci real estate developer/manager Alexandria Real Estate (ARE) Equities. Land & Buildings concluded that people working from home resulted in 50% less use of cell phones in Alexandria’s buildings during the 12 months ending in February, versus the year ending February 2020, soon before COVID-19 upended the world.

Alexandria is a publicly traded real estate investment trust with an asset base of 74.9 million square feet and approximately 825 tenants in North America, including seven of the 10 largest GEN-ranked biopharma clusters.

Alexandria found a defender in commercial real estate investor Brad Thomas, who unlike Land & Buildings takes a long position in the developer. Thomas asserted in a commentary that Alexandria enjoys a sustainable competitive advantage that includes the research activity being conducted; its concentration in campuses built within core centers of innovation; and continuing life sciences growth.

“There is a unique desire among life science entities to cluster together in campus ecosystems like ARE has pioneered in order to drive productivity and collaboration, to recruit and retain top talent, to attract strategic capital, and to ensure best-in-class, 24/7 operations of their mission-critical real estate,” Thomas observed.

Among the positives Thomas cites for life-sci: An estimated market value of $5 trillion-plus, a steady pace of FDA drug approvals continuing into this year, and annual funds (including venture capital, public market investment, government grants, and private philanthropy) ranging between $450 billion and $500 billion year-over-year: “The unmet need matched with an increasing armamentarium of new and improved tools, provides a limitless opportunity set for the life science industry.”

Cautious with capital

That optimism is shared by Alexandria’s closest rival among life-sci developers—privately-held BioMed Realty, a Blackstone portfolio company that owns and manages 16.3 million square feet of life-sci space in the U.S. and U.K., including five GEN-ranked clusters.

Speaking with GEN, BioMed Realty CEO Tim Schoen acknowledged the numerous challenges faced by life-sci companies in recent years—including the bear market, inflation, rising interest rates, and the regional banking crisis of the past winter.

Despite all that, Schoen said, biopharmas have continued spending on R&D, and accessing NIH grants and venture capital, even if the pace of VC investment remains below the record highs of a few years back.

“We’ve seen a period of time here in the last year where companies have really been cautious with capital, and they’re trying to extend their runways to get to the next milestone. So you’ve seen a slowdown like a lot of people talk about in the press. You’ll see the headline come out that real estate slowed—and it has. The volume of transactions has slowed, as has the number of tenants in the market,” Schoen explained.

But in its core markets, he added, BioMed is seeing vacancy levels at or near pre-COVID lows for companies seeking space.

“We’ll start to see that demand come back as tenants meet their next milestone and need to expand as well as take more space, because they’ve got the funding now that they needed, particularly in the core markets,” Schoen predicted. “Whether it’s UTC [University Town Center] or Torrey Pines in San Diego, whether it’s South San Francisco or the Peninsula or the Emeryville area in San Francisco, or East Cambridge in Kendall Square, in Boston, or South Lake Union in Seattle, those markets are always going to be strong and have a real depth of talent and companies that are looking for space.”

Five criteria

Since 2014, GEN has issued annual, nationally cited rankings to indicate which regions are most competitive in efforts to attract life sciences companies. This year’s rankings are based on:

• NIH funding—Figures for NIH funding were taken from the publicly available NIH RePORT database for the current federal fiscal year through July 18, plus all of fiscal year 2022 (October 1, 2020, through September 30, 2022).
• Venture capital (VC) funding—Figures for all of 2022 and the first half of 2023, as compiled by regional life sciences groups and PitchBook, which joins with the National Venture Capital Association to publish the quarterly Venture Monitor reports.
• Patents—A tally of the number of patents containing the word “biotechnology” and towns and cities within a given region or state. This past year the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) overhauled its public patent database, resulting in larger numbers as search results now capture references to cities and states among inventors and even the text of patent claims within patent families, in addition to assignee companies or institutions.
• Lab space—The total-size-of-market figure, in millions of square feet, as furnished by regional life sciences groups. In regions that do 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.
• Jobs—The preferred sources for job figures were regional life sciences groups. Alternative sources included commercial real estate firms.

10. Chicagoland Trammell Crow on July 17 announced two expansions by tenants at its 725,000-square-foot Fulton Labs campus in Chicago’s Fulton Market area. One is the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Chicago, which took about 28,200 square feet. Chicago beat out 36 U.S. cities that submitted 57 applications to host the Biohub. The other, venture capital firm Portal Innovations, is growing to 55,000 square feet by adding 6,000 square feet. Portal Innovations raised a $100 million financing in May to invest in life sciences startups in Chicago and elsewhere. Also expanding within Chicagoland is Trammell Crow’s life-sci portfolio. The Dallas-based developer broke ground in February on the $225 million, 302,000-square-foot second phase of Hyde Park Labs, whose anchor tenant is the University of Chicago. In suburban North Chicago, Rosalind Franklin University last month completed 14,000 square feet of wet lab space in its Innovation and Research Park. And in Evanston, TCC is building the 177,575-square-foot Evanston Labs, set to open next spring. Chicagoland ranks sixth in jobs with a life sciences workforce of 90,941, as tallied by the Illinois Biotechnology Industry Organization or iBIO. Beyond jobs, the region ranks ninth in patents (4,452), and 10th in both NIH funding (3,820 awards totaling $1.91 billion) and venture capital ($1.2 billion in 2022 [iBIO] and $112 million in Q1-Q2 2023 [PitchBook]. Chicagoland placed only 11th in lab space (more than 1.98 million square feet, according to iBIO), but that figure expected to rise in coming years since the region has 456,442 square feet of lab space under construction.

9. Seattle Seattle can boast of three biotechs that have attracted billion-dollar-plus buyouts by larger biopharmas since March: Bothell, WA-based Seagen (formerly Seattle Genetics) is being acquired by Pfizer for $43 billion, the year’s biggest acquisition deal to date. That deal has already sparked an in-depth antitrust review including a “second request for information” from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) this month. Chinook Therapeutics is being bought by Novartis for $3.2 billion while CTI BioPharma was scooped up for $1.7 billion by Swedish Orphan Biovitrum (Sobi) in a deal completed last month. Moderna announced plans to open a 220-person Seattle office focused on scaling up artificial intelligence and cloud-based tools in March. Also that month, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center opened its second building, a $320 million, 150,000-square-foot outpatient clinic. However, Fred Hutch spinout Affini-T Therapeutics is shutting down its Seattle lab, some of whose 17 staffers have been offered relocation to the company’s Watertown, MA, headquarters. Across Washington state, more than 300 life-sci facilities and organizations support more than 100,000 jobs with an annual economic impact of $35.5 billion and showed a 33.6% increase in job growth from 2015–2021, statewide industry group Life Science Washington reported in May. Seattle ranks seventh in venture capital ($1.2 billion last year, $381.8 million in January–June 2023, according to Life Science Washington), and eighth in NIH funding (2,805 awards totaling $2.206 billion). But the region places ninth in lab space with 9.257 million square feet of lab space (Life Science Washington), and 10th in both patents (4,125) and workforce size (approximately 43,500, also according to Life Science Washington).

8. North Carolina Pfizer was spared from human tragedy when a tornado with wind speeds of up to 150 mph damaged its manufacturing plant in Rocky Mount, NC, on July 19. All 4,500 Pfizer staffers were safe and accounted for, the company confirmed. But the twister severely damaged the roof of the 1.4 million-square-foot facility, which had produced “nearly 25%” of all sterile injectables used in U.S. hospitals. Pfizer is one of 39 life-sci and related companies to announce expansions or relocations in North Carolina since January 2022, generating more than 3,500 new jobs, according to the state-funded North Carolina Biotechnology Center. The pharma giant in January agreed to acquire for an undisclosed price Abzena’s 100-person manufacturing facility in Sanford, NC, set to expand to 300 people by 2025. Sanford is where Pfizer last year began a $500 million expansion at another site designed to boost its production of gene therapies. Also in January, Eli Lilly announced a $450 million expansion of its nearly completed $474 million Research Triangle Park pharmaceutical manufacturing campus, set to create 100+ new jobs. More recently, chronic kidney disease cell therapy developer ProKidney said in June it will create a $485 million manufacturing facility in Greensboro, NC, by 2027 that will employ up to 330.RTP and Raleigh-Durham anchor life-sci activity in the Tar Heel State, which ranks highest at fifth in NIH funding (4,612 awards totaling $3.482 billion). But North Carolina has sparkled lately in venture capital funding, where it has climbed to sixth (from 10th last year) with $844.867 million in 2022 and $721.067 million in Q1–Q2 2023, according to the North Carolina Biotechnology Center. The Center counts “more than 75,000” jobs across the state, which ranks the region eighth. North Carolina is also seventh in lab space (17.6 million square feet according to Colliers) but finishes eighth in patents (4,552).

7. Greater Philadelphia The City of Brotherly Love and its suburbs—which extend into parts of southern New Jersey and northern Delaware—have positioned their region in recent years as a magnet for cell and gene therapy development, drawing upon anchors that include University of Pennsylvania’s pioneering Gene Therapy program led by James M. Wilson, MD, PhD, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), The Wistar Institute, Roche-owned Spark Therapeutics, turnaround-focused Passage Bio, and The Discovery Labs in suburban King of Prussia, PA.   Spark broke ground in March on a $575 million gene therapy innovation center within Drexel University’s campus in Philadelphia’s University City. In May, construction began on 2300 Market by Breakthrough, a 223,000-square-foot research facility at S. 23rd Street within Philadelphia’s Center City, set to be completed next year. Also in May, Wistar joined with the Pennsylvania Biotechnology Center and Baruch S. Blumberg Institute to launch a partnership committed to seeding, launching and nurturing life-sci startups. Across the region, 1,200 companies specialize in life sciences, one of four industry focus areas of Select Greater Philadelphia, a council of the Chamber of Commerce for Greater Philadelphia that recently launched a website with property and job opening search tools. Recognizing the region’s life-sci growth, the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO) recently selected Philadelphia as the site of its 2027 International Convention.   Greater Philadelphia ranks highest in patents, fourth with 14,969. The region is sixth in lab space (22.8 million square feet according to Colliers) and NIH funding (4,493 awards totaling $2.343 billion). However, Philly and vicinity rank ninth in jobs (71,286, according to Select Greater Philadelphia) and venture capital ($600 million in 2022, $280.27 million in January–June 2023 according to Select Greater Philadelphia citing Dealforma data). Raising VC within Greater Philly is an ongoing challenge: “We need a $10 billion fund that’s Philly-focused,” said Audrey Greenberg, co-founder and chief business officer of the Center for Breakthrough Medicines in King of Prussia, told Philadelphia Magazine in May.

6. San Diego San Diego-based Prometheus Biosciences figured in the year’s second-biggest biotech M&A deal to date when Merck & Co. completed its $10.8 billion acquisition of the immunology drug developer last month. The region anchored by “the Plymouth of the West” has long been viewed by biopharma giants and up-and-comers as offering boundless opportunities. Speaking of which, Boundless Bio, whose precision oncology therapies target extrachromosomal DNA (ecDNA), closed in May on a $100 million Series C financing co-led by Bayer’s investment arm Leaps by Bayer and RA Capital Management. Two mega-campuses are in the works: IQHQ is developing the $1.6 billion, 1.7 million-square-foot Research and Development District (RaDD) on San Diego’s Pacific coastline, while Sterling Bay and Harrison Street have broken ground on the $650 million Pacific Center, a 500,000-square-foot campus in Sorrento Mesa set to open in Q4 2024. Among San Diego’s life-sci anchors is Illumina, which is eliminating an unspecified number of jobs under a plan designed to reduce annual expenses by $100 million. The sequencing giant is also vacating its second San Diego campus called “i3”, which opened in 2017 when the company anticipated soon outgrowing its headquarters within “America’s Finest City.” Illumina’s moves followed a turbulent spring for Illumina that saw CEO Francis deSouza resign last month after shareholders ousted his ally as board chairman and elected an ally of activist investor Carl C. Icahn, whose case for change at the company included an exclusive GEN interview. Home to the 2024 BIO International Convention, the San Diego region ranks highest at fourth in both lab space (24.4 million square feet according to statewide industry group BIOCOM, citing a figure from CBRE) and venture capital ($2.557 billion in 2022, $878 million in Q1-Q2 2023, according to BIOCOM California). San Diego places fifth in patents (12,705) but finishes seventh in jobs (77,770 according to BIOCOM California) and just ninth in NIH funding (2,919 awards totaling $1.965 billion).

5. Los Angeles / Orange County Long a distant third among California’s life sciences clusters, Los Angeles/Orange County has made impressive strides catching up to the longer-established San Francisco and San Diego ecosystems. One area of marked improvement is venture capital, where Los Angeles VC firm Westlake Village BioPartners on July 17 launched a third fund of $450 million, designed to incubate early-stage next-generation biotechs in the “City of Angels” and beyond. Westlake has established eight companies in the region to date. Drug development is another strength. In addition to giants like Amgen and Kite Pharma, a Gilead Company, the region houses up-and-comers like Agoura Hills, CA-based A2 Biotherapeutics. In May, A2 dosed its first patient in the Phase I EVEREST dose-escalation trial (NCT05736731) assessing A2B530, the first autologous cell therapy developed through A2 Bio’s Tmod platform. A2 signaled growth plans last year by leasing 77,000 square feet at 30601 Agoura Road for a new global HQ. By contrast the region’s largest biopharma Amgen this year has shrunk its workforce, which in Ventura County has numbered 5,000-plus people. Amgen disclosed plans to lay off about 300 staffers in January, followed by an additional 450 in March. Amgen hopes to grow, however, through a planned $27.8 billion acquisition of Horizon Therapeutics—and is fighting the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which opposes the deal on antitrust grounds. Los Angeles/Orange County places a strong third in both jobs (134,739, according to statewide industry group California Life Sciences, based on 2021 data published earlier this month), and venture capital ($3.43 billion in 2022 and $1.2 billion in January-June 2023, according to PitchBook). Other indicators, however, lag behind, with the region placing seventh in both NIH funding (3,702 awards totaling $2.25 billion) and patents (5,676), while only ranging as high as eighth in lab space (11.4 million square feet according to statewide industry group BIOCOM California).

4. New York / New Jersey Developers are bringing big biotech projects to the Big Apple. Elevate Research Properties is building the 400,000-square-foot West End Labs, where Graviton Bioscience this month became the first tenant by leasing 30,000 square feet. Elevate is also partnering with Nuveen Real Estate to build Iron Horse Labs, a 200,000-square-foot lab building at 309 East 94 Street—birthplace of New York Yankees baseball legend Lou Gehrig, who succumbed to ALS at age 37 in 1941. New York City and New York State are joining the City University of New York (CUNY) to develop the 1.5 million-square-foot Science Park and Research Campus (SPARC) in Kips Bay, expected to create 10,000 jobs upon full completion in 2031. At the Brooklyn Navy Yard, tech incubator Newlab plans in 2025 to open The Center for Planetary Health (C4PH), which says it is the nation’s first commercial hub for sustainability-focused biotech. Across the suburbs, Pfizer is pursuing a $470-million expansion of its Vaccine Research and Development facilities in Pearl River, NY. Regeneron Pharmaceuticals is carrying out a $1.8 billion expansion of its Tarrytown, NY, headquarters campus that will bring eight new buildings totaling 900,000 square feet and 1,500+ new jobs upon completion in 2027. A 2025 opening is planned for the $750 million, 519,000-square-foot Jack and Sheryl Morris Cancer Center in New Brunswick—where SJP Properties and the New Brunswick Development Corp. are building the $731 million, three-phase Health & Life Science Exchange (HELIX). The first phase of 574,000 square feet, now underway, includes a New Jersey Innovation HUB for incubating early-stage companies, a new home of Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, and a Rutgers translational research facility. In June, developers unveiled the 600,000-square-foot second phase, to contain build-to-suit lab and office space for life-sci and technology tenants. HELIX is set to open in 2025.New York/New Jersey is second in jobs (144,500, according to Cushman & Wakefield) and NIH funding (9,404 awards totaling $5.38 billion). But New York/New Jersey remains middle of the pack in lab space, where it has slipped to fifth (23.1 million square feet of which 79% was in New Jersey, according to Colliers) and remains fifth in venture capital ($1.84 billion in 2022 and $650 million in Q1–Q2 2023, according to PitchBook). NY/NJ also dipped to sixth in patents (9,793).

3. BioHealth Capital Region [Maryland/Virginia/Washington, D.C.] Johns Hopkins University, long a regional research anchor, became a significant provider of life-sci space (with developer partner Trammell Crow) in March, when their plans for The Lab at Belward, within the university’s Belward campus in Shady Grove (Rockville, MD), won conditional site plan approval from Montgomery County’s Planning Board. Plans call for 757,000 square feet in three buildings, leaving 526,800 square feet available for future development. Also in Rockville, MilliporeSigma is expanding its biosafety testing capacity by building a $286 million, 250,000-square-foot facility that will add 500 jobs to the current 600. In Frederick, MD, Kite Pharma, a Gilead Company is expanding its global cell therapy supply chain operations by building an approximately 70,000-square-foot raw materials warehouse, and adding 100 jobs to a workforce projected to reach 500-plus full-timers by 2026. However, Gaithersburg, MD-based Novavax in May began eliminating approximately 25% of its global workforce—nearly 400 full-timers, about 100 contractors and consultants—as demand for its sole marketed product, a COVID-19 vaccine, missed expectations; an updated vaccine is planned this fall. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) in January joined the University of Virginia to announce the $300 million Paul and Diane Manning Institute of Biotechnology within the 54-acre Fontaine Research Park adjacent to UVA in Charlottesville, VA, set for completion in 2026 or 2027. The Mannings have gifted UVA $100 million toward the institute, which aims to advance research into cell and gene therapies, nanotechnology, targeted drug delivery, and other technologies for next-generation treatments. Paul Manning is chairman and CEO of PBM Capital, a healthcare-focused investment firm in Charlottesville. The Maryland/Virginia/Washington, DC, BioHealth Capital Region (BHCR) has long committed itself to achieving a top-three ranking among biopharma clusters by this year. BHCR has finally succeeded, in part thanks to its nation-leading portfolio of 52,899 patents. That reflects the presence of Johns Hopkins as well as the NIH and National Library of Medicine, which were frequently cited in those patents because of inventors or the reference standards they applied. BHCR ranks third in NIH funding (6,201 awards totaling $4.245 billion), and lab space with 31.69 million square feet according to JLL, which along with Cushman & Wakefield includes the 9.2 million square feet of lab space within the NIH Campus headquarters in Bethesda, MD. The region is fourth in jobs (128,886 according to BHCR) but just eight in venture capital with $1.002 billion last year and $435 million in January-June 2023 [JLL data cited by BHCR].

2. Boston/Cambridge Boston/Cambridge reinforced its status as a top-tier regional biotech cluster by hosting this year’s Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO) International Convention, which drew more than 20,000 people to the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. At BIO, Gov. Maura Healey (D) announced MassTalent, an online hub linking employers to talent in the life sciences and other fast-growing fields. “We want to lengthen our lead in the life sciences industry,” Healey declared. Indeed, Boston/Cambridge remains the nation’s leading cluster in lab space (55.9 million square feet, according to the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council or MassBio) and NIH funding (9,647 awards totaling $5.412 billion), same rankings as last year. The region also stayed fifth year-over-year in jobs (106,704 according to MassBio, based on figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages). So how could Boston/Cambridge lose the number-one spot on the GEN cluster A-List it has topped since 2015? The region’s ranking dipped in patents to third, though still a notch below the San Francisco region (18,769)—and in venture capital, where for a change it finished second to the Bay Area ($8.7 billion in 2022 and $3.46 billion in Q1–Q2 2023, according to PitchBook). The capital decline is likely a consequence of last year’s post-pandemic bear market since Boston/Cambridge has topped the Bay Area in VC so far this year. This year’s market recovery could—if it lasts—propel Boston/Cambridge back to the top. In any case, the region’s lab space lead will likely widen given that 14.86 million square feet is under construction, with another 26 million to 59 million square feet expected to be completed by 2025.The region’s life-sci development boom continues. Alexandria Real Estate Equities in June sold 268,000 square feet of 421 Park Drive, a planned 660,034-square-foot Class A lab development in Boston’s Fenway section, to Boston Children’s Hospital for $155 million. Upon completion set for 2026, 421 Park Drive will be part of a two million-plus square-foot mega-campus to be called Alexandria Center for Life Science–Fenway. In Cambridge, BioMed Realty is building 585 Kendall, a 600,000-square-foot building combining office and lab space for Takeda Pharmaceuticals with a 400-seat theater and 150-seat stage to be operated and programmed by nonprofit group 585 Arts. Occupancy is set for 2026. Beyond big campuses, Cambridge welcomed Bayer’s first incubator for cell and gene therapies (CGT) entrepreneurs, the LabCentral-managed, 26,000-square-foot Co.Lab Cambridge in Kendall Square. Big deals continue to percolate in Boston/Cambridge: On July 24, Cambridge-based Alnylam Pharmaceuticals joined Roche to announce an up-to-$2.8 billion collaboration to develop and commercialize Alnylam’s zilebesiran, an RNAi hypertension candidate now in Phase II. And in June, Eli Lilly agreed to acquire Cambridge-based Sigilon Therapeutics for up to $309.6 million.

1. San Francisco Bay Area South San Francisco, the “Birthplace of Biotechnology,” is witnessing a new generation of life-sci development emerging. Trammell Crow in May proposed a two-tower, nearly 750,000-square-foot campus at Sylvester Road and East Grand Avenue. A month earlier, the city’s Planning Commission approved plans by Sanfo Group to expand 101 Gull Drive from 166,000 to 281,000 square feet in nine stories (up from seven) and convert it to R&D space. And in March, Moderna announced plans to expand to SSF, into 18,000 square feet at BioMed Realty’s Gateway of Pacific III (700 Gateway Blvd.). Yet the region faces challenges that include retaining jobs and employers, for reasons ranging from an industry wide slowdown to San Francisco’s woes ranging from downtown crime and homelessness that may help explain an exodus of retailers. Following complaints of price gouging by hotels, J.P. Morgan has only committed to hosting its annual Healthcare Conference in San Francisco through 2024, amid speculation about a move to Florida in 2025. This year’s conference attracted 8,000 registered attendees and generated an estimated $86 million to “The City.” San Francisco-based FibroGen on July 20 said it was eliminating 32% of its workforce (104 of 325 positions). Illumina is deciding whether to keep open the Foster City, CA, campus it opened five years ago. Genentech, a member of the Roche Group, said in March it was closing a 40-year-old production facility in South San Francisco, and eliminating the site’s workforce of about 265 (down from about 900 in 2019). Genentech said the shutdown was long planned and part of a strategy to refocus the site on clinical supply production and move commercial manufacturing elsewhere. Also in “South City,” InterVenn Biosciences in June ended a 10-year lease it signed just last year for 142,000 square feet at Aralon Properties’ 499 Forbes Blvd. The “City by the Bay” and its suburbs showed only incremental ranking gains from last year, rising from second to first in both jobs (158,449 according to BIOCOM California) and venture capital ($11.181 billion in 2022, $2.568 billion in January–June 2023, says BIOCOM California citing PitchBook data). Yet those gains were enough to edge out Boston/Cambridge and reclaim the top spot it occupied on GEN’s top U.S. clusters list when it first appeared in 2014—despite a dip from first to second in patents (27,472). The San Francisco region also stayed unchanged from last year, remaining second in lab space (47.1 million square feet according to Cushman & Wakefield), and fourth in NIH funding (7,160 awards totaling $4.038 billion).

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Many biotech stocks sank deeper than the overall market during the first quarter, as GEN recently reported. But the first quarter (Q1) results were skewed by the banking crisis wrought by the collapses of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank. Since then, shares of publicly traded biotechs have either been climbing or have slipping by smaller degrees than a year ago,

This year’s winners are led by Jiangsu Hengrui, which vaulted from No. 15 to No. 10 by showing the largest year-over-year market cap gain at 62.7%, thanks to positive clinical data for its camrelizumab (such as a Phase III trial with Elavar Therapeutics’ rivoceranib in liver cancer) and deals (licensing the peripheral T-cell lymphoma candidate SHR-2554 to Treeline Biosciences for $706 million). Next highest at 60.7% is a company that didn’t even make GEN’s A-List last year, Daiichi Sankyo, following new approvals and a pivot to oncology anchored by Enhertu^® (fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki), co-marketed with AstraZeneca.

Daiichi Sankyo is one of three companies on this year’s top 25 whose market caps were not large enough to appear on the list last year. One of the other companies is argenx, an immunology-focused drug developer focused on treating severe autoimmune diseases. Its 37.1% jump in market cap catapulted the company to No. 25 this year. The other newcomer is BeiGene, whose antibody-based pipeline could, according to the company, address 80% of the world’s cancers by cancer type.

A spot check by GEN reveals that six of the top 10 electronic transfer funds (ETFs) reporting year-over-year gains as of May 2, compared with eight of the 10 showing one-year losses at the end of Q1. The biggest one-year gainer (up 10.1%) was First Trust NYSE Arca Biotech ETF (FBT), the fourth largest ETF with $1.46 billion in total assets, jumping from $138.38 to $152.29.

By comparison, the overall Standard & Poor’s (S&P) 500 index, which tracks 500 of the largest U.S. public stocks, dipped 0.9% from May 2, 2022 through the same date this year, from $4,155.38 to $4,119.58.

The biggest one-year decliner (down 40.2%) was Direxion Daily S&P Biotech Bull 3X Shares (LABU), the fifth-largest ETF with about $1.064 billion in total assets (dropping from $9.14 to $5.47). Yet since March 31, LABU’s price has risen 11.4%, climbing from $4.91, while FBT dipped 1.8% (from $155.03) and the S&P 500 inched up 0.2% from $4,109.31.

The largest biotech ETF with $7.93 billion in total assets, the iShares Biotechnology ETF (IBB), rose 9.7% year-over-year, from $118.36 to $129.81, but only 0.5% since March 31. The second-ranked ETF, PDR S&P Biotech ETF (XBI; $6.447 billion), increased 3.8% since May 2, 2022 but 4.6% since March 31. Third-ranked ARK Genomic Revolution ETF ($1.865 billion) skidded 21%, from $35.76 to $28.26—but has only decreased 6% since March 31.

Total asset figures were supplied by VettaFi, a provider of ETF and other data, analytics, and thought leadership for asset managers.

Making the List

This A-List presents GEN’s updated list of the top 25 biotech companies, ranked by their market capitalization (the product of the share price and the number of outstanding shares) as of May 2, 2023—as indicated by the exchanges on which the companies’ shares are traded, or by other publicly available sources. Each company is listed by rank, name, market cap in billions of dollars, and percentage change from last year. (Figures are rounded off to the nearest hundredth.)

This list does not include pharmaceutical companies with a heritage of small-molecule, non-biologic drug development, which GEN has covered in recent years through a separate list.

The total market capitalization of the 25 biotech firms on this list rose about 17% from GEN’s 2022 A-List, from $1.498 trillion to $1.75 trillion. Over the past five years, market cap for the top 25 biotechs has more than doubled (up 190%) from the $918.85 billion reported by GEN’s “Top 25 Biotech Companies of 2018.”

Going back to 2018, 10 top biotechs that were listed back then do not appear here—either because they were acquired, or because their market caps didn’t keep pace with this year’s top 25.

Among this year’s top 25 biotech companies, gainers of market cap (16) outnumbered losers (9)—compared with 14 and 11 last year.

Companies headquartered outside the United States accounted for more than half (14) of the companies ranked on this year’s top 25 list biotech companies, one more than on GEN’s 2022 A-List, though two ex-U.S. companies that made this year’s list did not appear last year.

Of the 14 headquartered outside the United States, four are based in China, two in Denmark and Japan, and one each in Australia, Germany, India, the Netherlands, South Korea, and Switzerland (but not including a second company with a Swiss headquarters since it also maintains headquarters in the United States).

The smallest company listed this year has a market cap of just under $16 billion, compared with just over $14 billion for the 25th ranked company on GEN’s 2022 list.

Just missing the list at number 26 is Otsuka Holdings, which had a market cap of $19.70 billion on May 2, followed by Celltrion ($18.55 billion), UCB (which made last year’s list but has since fallen 17%, to an even $18 billion), BioMarin Pharmaceutical ($17.61 billion), and Incyte ($15.60 billion).

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First, the good news: Employment reached a record high of 2.1 million jobs at the start of this year, the commercial real estate firm CBRE reported in its 2023 U.S. Life Sciences Outlook, released earlier this month. However, the pace of biotech job growth had slowed to 4.1% in January from 6.3% a year earlier. Already this year a spot check by GEN shows 61 companies disclosing layoffs as of April 10, vs. 37 during the same period a year ago.

A more dramatic illustration of that slowdown can be seen in a declining average number of jobs added per month as measured by CBRE. That average has slid 70%, from 11,144 jobs between June 2020 and June 2022, to 3,378 jobs between July 2022 and January 2023. The 2020–2022 average was skewed by a wave of hiring and activity by biotech in the year following the onset of COVID-19, since the average was 6,259 in pre-pandemic 2018–2019.

CBRE blames the employment decline on rising interest rates and the slowdown in public and private funding for the life sciences. On the public side, only five U.S. biotech priced initial public offerings (IPOs) in the first quarter, totaling $382.5 million—most of that reflecting IPOs of $192 million (psychotropics contract manufacturer Lucy Scientific Discovery, February 9) and $161 million (Structure Therapeutics, whose small molecule drugs target G-protein-coupled receptors, February)—compared with eight U.S. and European companies totaling about $744 million in Q1 2022.

As smaller biotech avoid the IPO market, they are expected instead to fuel a new wave of mergers and acquisition (M&A) activity by biopharma giants which are often better poised to grow the workforces of the companies being snapped up.

“When the public market is effectively closed, those companies will turn more to pharma partners, and we think that’s where it’s going to really be the most important watching brief to keep for the next year or two,” Matthew Gardner, who leads CBRE’s advisory life sciences practice in the U.S., told GEN.

On the private side, EY has reported a 37% year-to-year decline in the total value of U.S. and European VC deals, to $16.88 billion in 2022 from $26.62 billion in 2021. The number of VC deals in the U.S. and Europe fell 18%, to 761 last year from 930 in 2021.

“Previous cycles show that any slowdown in life sciences employment likely won’t be as severe as that of the broader economy. An uptick in venture funding in Q4 2022 was a hopeful sign for employment stabilization later this year since employment changes generally mirror funding changes after a two-quarter lag,” the Outlook report noted, before adding: “However, recent turmoil in the banking sector could cause quarterly reductions in funding this year.”

Below is a list of 10 research and clinical biotech occupations projected to add jobs through 2031, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) Occupational Outlook Handbook, updated last December, ranked in order of the number of expected additional jobs to be created between 2021 and 2031, projected as of April 10. Each occupation also lists the number of jobs in 2021 as counted by BLS, the percentage increase between 2021 and 2031, the median pay per year in 2021, and a description of the position.

This year as with GEN’s 2021 A-List of top-10 biotech jobs, the greatest number of projected jobs over the coming decade were for professionals who collect samples and perform tests to analyze body fluids, tissue, and other substances—namely clinical laboratory technologists, also known as medical laboratory scientists, and clinical laboratory technicians. But in a sign of how the COVID pandemic has reshaped lab employment, the occupation with the second greatest number of projected jobs are not biological technicians as in 2021, but medical scientists who oversee research and manage clinical trials and other investigative methods.

For three of the 10 occupations highlighted in the Handbook, BLS projected smaller increases in jobs from 2019 to 2029 than it did between 2019 and 2029, the 10-year period BLS examined in the previous edition of its Handbook, the basis for GEN’s 2021 A-List. GEN published its first A-List of top-10 jobs in 2014, and published updated A-Lists in 2016, as well as in 2018 and 2019. The other seven occupations showed increases in the 10-year job projections compared to 2019–29.

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1. Financing deals: Slower pace to continue

The slower pace of private and public financing and the lower values of deals seen in 2022 will continue into this year. This observation was shared with GEN by Subin Baral, partner and global life sciences deals leader of Ernst & Young. He added, “The access to capital that all these companies enjoyed back in 2019, 2020, and the early part of 2021—I don’t think we’ll see that in the near term.”

A total of $16.58 billion in venture capital (VC) was invested in 285 biotech deals during the first three quarters of 2022, according to Evaluate Pharma, down from the record-high $24.51 billion in 446 deals of Q1–Q3 2021. In Q3, $3.6 billion was invested in 56 deals, compared with $7.14 billion and 135 deals a year earlier.

According to IPOScoop.com, 22 biopharma companies priced initial public offerings (IPOs) during 2022 (up to December 8), versus 74 in 2021. Also declining were biotech special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) IPOs, with 10 biotech firms, and another 6 that revealed SPAC plans in 2021, completing mergers with blank-check companies.

2. M&A: Deals poised for comeback

The slowdown in private and public financings is one factor expected to drive merger and acquisition (M&A) deals in 2023, Baral remarked. Other factors include loss of exclusivity (longtime top-selling drugs are nearing the end of patent protection) and the $1.2 trillion amassed by 25 biopharma giants to carry out M&A. The latter factor is what Ernst & Young calls “firepower.”

“The good deals are getting done,” Baral pointed out. “They aren’t getting done just because they are cheap. Deals are getting done because they are the right deals to get done.”

PwC predicts that the value and volume of pharmaceutical and life sciences M&A will bounce back in the new year—but won’t be as robust as 2021: “In 2023, we expect M&A to more closely resemble prior years with a total deal value in the $225 billion to $275 billion range across all subsectors.”

According to PwC, during 2022 (up to November 15), deal value reached $137.8 billion (down 49% from 2021) in 266 deals (down 28%). The year’s largest deal at deadline was Amgen’s $27.8 billion purchase of Horizon Therapeutics, announced December 12, followed by Pfizer’s $11.6 billion purchase of Biohaven Pharmaceuticals, completed October 3.

3. Cancer: Big names bet on vaccines

Industry watchers will be paying close attention to data that is expected to be released by developers of cancer vaccines. One is BioNTech, which in September presented promising follow-up data from its ongoing Phase I/II trial (NCT04503278; 2019-004323-20) assessing its wholly owned novel chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy candidate BNT211 in patients with relapsed or refractory advanced solid tumors. The trial’s estimated primary completion date is in August.

In September, Merck & Co. exercised its option to jointly develop and commercialize Moderna’s messenger RNA (mRNA)-based personalized cancer vaccine, for which Merck agreed to pay Moderna $250 million upfront. Although primary data for the personalized cancer vaccine was expected in Q4 2022, the trial’s primary completion date is expected to be in September 2024.

“We expect additional readouts of cancer vaccines in randomized trials that will further inform whether recent advances in antigen targeting, vaccine potency, and patient selection were sufficient to overcome the historical challenges,” Daina M. Graybosch, PhD, senior managing director, immuno-oncology, SVB Securities, wrote last summer.

4. mRNA: Beyond COVID-19

Biopharma firms will step up efforts to develop more drugs and vaccines based on mRNA, and to broaden these efforts beyond COVID-19. Last spring, GEN reported on companies applying emerging technologies that included Cas13-encoding mRNA, circular mRNA, programmable mRNA, and self-amplifying mRNA.

A self-amplifying mRNA collaboration that was announced last November could generate more than $4 billion for Arcturus Therapeutics, which will partner with CSL to develop vaccines for COVID-19, influenza, pandemic preparedness, and three undisclosed “globally prevalent respiratory infectious diseases.” Last year began with Pfizer and Beam Therapeutics launching an up-to-$1.35 billion mRNA base editing collaboration.

Francois Vigneault, PhD, co-founder and CEO of Shape Therapeutics, which develops programmable RNA therapies using artificial intelligence, acknowledged that a continuing challenge for mRNA is duration of response: “Is an acute, very intense response that’s very short lived useful or not? That’s why I think it’s going to be exciting to see the field evolve.”

mRNA has most successfully and lucratively been applied in COVID-19 vaccines, whose top developers reaped billions during Q1–Q3 2022. Pfizer earned $26.477 billion; Pfizer’s partner BioNTech earned €11.413 billion (about $12 billion); and Moderna earned $13.576 billion. In 2023, and possibly beyond 2023, lawsuits will play out between Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna to settle disputes over mRNA vaccine patents.

5. Cell and gene therapy: More R&D, fewer deals

Growing regulatory acceptance of cell and gene therapies—26 have been approved by the FDA, 4 in 2022 alone—will spur additional development efforts. Kite Pharma, a Gilead Sciences company, in December committed up to $4 billion-plus toward co-development of Arcellx’s multiple myeloma CAR T-cell therapy CART-ddBCMA.

“There’s a lot of collaboration and partnerships that we see,” Baral noted, “and we’ll continue to get early innovation on cell and gene therapies.”

In gene therapy, Bluebird Bio expects to file in the first quarter for FDA approval of its third gene therapy candidate, lovotibeglogene autotemcel (lovo-cel) for sickle-cell disease, after gaining approvals for the other two in 2022.

According to the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine, developers of cell therapies, cell-based immune-oncology therapies, gene therapies, and tissue engineering therapies raised a total $6.4 billion and oversaw 2,093 active trials during the first half of 2022—less than half the $14.1 billion and 11% below the 2,358 trials of H1 2021.

6. Synthetic biology: Biopharma focus

Synthetic biology, or “synbio,” has disrupted industries as diverse as agriculture, food, and fashion, in addition to the biopharma industry. Applications of synthetic biology focused on drug development and manufacturing will be more of a focus this year for at least one of the segment’s largest companies.

“You can expect to see us move more aggressively into biopharma,” Ginkgo Bioworks’ co-founder and CEO, Jason Kelly, PhD, told GEN. He said that Ginkgo sees opportunities in manufacturing products for adeno-associated viruses (AAVs) and capsids, T cells, and RNA. He added, “Those three categories will see us do a lot more deals.”

Ginkgo completed plenty of deals in 2022, including a partnership with Merck & Co. to engineer up to four enzymes toward active pharmaceutical ingredient manufacturing (up to $144 million in milestones). Ginkgo acquired both Circularis Biotechnologies (which developed a circular RNA and promoter screening platform) and Altar (which developed an adaptive evolution platform), both for undisclosed prices. Ginkgo also bought Zymergen for $300 million. “Zymergen’s platform technology is quite good,” Kelly asserted. “We thought it would be better offered as a service and combined with Ginkgo’s platform technology, so that we can do better genetic engineering for more customers.”

7. Regulation: Pricing and politics

Biopharma stakeholders will be watching the effect of the Inflation Reduction Act on drug pricing beyond Medicare. The law lets Medicare set prices for some small-molecule drugs 9 years after FDA approval, versus 13 years for biologics.

“The price controls that the IRA imposes on medicines offered through Medicare may have the unintended consequence of reducing the number of new therapeutics created to respond to unmet medical needs,” warned Jim Greenwood, Alex Pinson, and Jamie Gregorian of DLA Piper.

Supporters counter that the law benefits patients through price curbs such as the $35/month cap on insulin. “Where patient affordability improves, manufacturers may also realize some volume offsets,” observed Muna Tuna, U.S. market access, pricing, and reimbursement leader, Ernst & Young.

The drug pricing debate is unlikely to be resolved by a Congress divided between the House of Representatives’ narrow Republican majority and the Senate’s slim Democratic majority, shaken when Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema announced that she had left the Democratic Party and registered as an independent.

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For the current fiscal year, the NIH won a nearly 5% or $2 billion increase over the previous fiscal year’s budget, to $44.96 billion. While that figure is 2.5% below the $46.1 billion sought by a consensus of advocates, the end result does mark a 45% increase in NIH spending over the past seven fiscal years.

That increase, arguably, is a testament to biomedical research funding remaining one of the few topics on which both parties have seen eye to eye in recent years. Indeed, the $1.5 trillion spending measure that included the NIH increase was passed by bipartisan majorities of 361-69 in the House and 68-31 in the Senate.

Whether NIH funding remains an area of consensus is uncertain. Congressional midterm elections this November could shift the majority of the U.S. Senate and/or the U.S. House of Representatives from Democratic to Republican—an outcome that would probably delay action on the budget proposed in March by President Joe Biden.

Biden has proposed a 9% increase for the NIH, which would bring the agency’s budget up to $49.04 billion. Some 10% of the total budget would go to the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), a program championed by Biden. The ARPA-H, which was established this fiscal year with $1 billion (well below the $6.5 billion sought by the president), says that it will support “transformative high-risk, high-reward research to drive biomedical and
health breakthroughs.”

A look back at FY 2021

As Michael Lauer, MD, the NIH’s deputy director for extramural research, wrote on the agency’s website in March, the NIH issued 56,794 competing and noncompeting extramural research awards in FY 2021, totaling about $32.32 billion—up $1.56 billion from FY 2020 (a 5% increase)—with 625 more grants funded. The extramural dollars awarded by the NIH supported research conducted at 2,696 organizations—including universities, medical schools, and other research institutions in every U.S. state and worldwide.

About 75% of the agency’s FY 2021 budget supported extramural research. Another 10% supported projects conducted by approximately 1,200 principal investigators and more than 4,000 postdoctoral fellows in its own laboratories, most of them on the NIH campus in Bethesda, MD.

This year’s top 50 institutions

We have ranked 50 institutions—universities, medical schools, research organizations, and teaching hospitals—according to how much NIH funding they had received as of June 6 in FY 2022. (FY 2022 ends on September 30.) Also included for each NIH grant recipient is the number of grant awards funded in FY 2022. (This number was not a factor in the ranking.)

Among the 24 states with at least one institution among the top 50 listed here, California leads the nation with eight NIH-funded institutions—of which four placed in the top 10, including the new number-one institution that dislodged longtime leader Johns Hopkins University. Next highest is New York with six NIH-funded institutions, followed by Massachusetts, North Carolina, and Texas with three each. These five states combined accounted for nearly half (23) of the top 50 NIH-funded institutions in the FY 2022.

Another six states received NIH grants for two institutions each (Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Washington state). The other 15 states have a single NIH-funded institution among the top 50 institutions listed here.

Some notable institutions are ranked 55 through 51 this fiscal year. They are, in order, as follows: Hackensack University Medical Center (NJ), University of Rochester (NY), University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School in Worcester, Harvard Medical School (MA), and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center (OH). Cincinnati Children’s just missed the top 50 with $83,009,811 through 171 awards.

Top 50 NIH-Funded Institutions of 2020
Top 50 NIH-Funded Institutions of 2019
Top 50 NIH-Funded Institutions of 2018

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On the “have” side are the larger biotech companies and the biotech companies that have products nearing commercialization. The haves are “as flush as ever,” Marcus remarked. “[They] are as flush with cash as ever,” Marcus said. He noted that they are estimated to have over $500 billion of available immediate cash following two years of record VC activity buoyed by the scramble to develop COVID-19 vaccines and drugs.

On the “have-not” side are small- and medium-capitalization biotech companies with preclinical and/or clinical programs. Their valuations have been dropping as investors sell off shares and pursue other opportunities. Marcus observed, “The open markets of the last nine years, by and large, are closed.”

“Most private companies are generally well financed, and the venture firms have raised mountains of capital. So, they’ve got pretty long runways,” Marcus elaborated. “But I think the people who went public, particularly the people who went public too soon, are caught in a bit of a squeeze with cash burn.” He indicated that he had in mind companies that were “preclinical” and those that were “clinical” to some degree and possibly lacking early readouts of data.

“And so, for those, I think you can expect they will not be on track to expand,” he continued. “Some will contract and reduce their workforce and maybe their space. We’ve seen some of that in different markets.”

Yet Alexandria during Q1 also announced expansion projects that included a 427,000-square-foot core R&D facility to be leased by Bristol Myers Squibb in San Diego and a 334,000-square-foot facility to be leased by Eli Lilly and Company in Boston. (The latter facility, at 15 Necco Street in Boston’s Fort Point section, is to accommodate Eli Lilly’s $700 million Institute for Genetic Medicine.)

Another real estate firm planning new facilities nationwide is IQHQ. It acquired the Elko Yards site in downtown Redwood City, CA, for a mixed-use project that is to include life sciences space. And Mark Goodman & Associates plans to start construction later this year on a 16-story, 503,000-square-foot life sciences development in Chicago’s Fulton Park section.

The scramble by regions to attract life sciences companies is of abiding interest to GEN. Since 2014, GEN has issued annual, nationally quoted rankings to indicate which regions are most competitive. This year, we compiled rankings based on:

•  NIH funding—Figures for NIH funding were taken from the publicly available NIH RePORT database for the current federal fiscal year through April, plus all of fiscal year 2021 (October 1, 2020, through September 30, 2021).
•  Venture capital (VC) funding—Figures for all of 2020, all of 2021, and the first quarter of 2022 were compiled by regional life sciences groups and two trackers of venture capital activity (CipherBio, an SVB Financial Group life science data platform, and PitchBook, which joins with the National Venture Capital Association to publish the quarterly Venture Monitor reports).
•  Patents—A tally was kept of the number of patents containing the word “biotechnology” that were awarded to companies located in namesake cities and suburbs.
•  Lab space—The highest total-size-of-market figure, in millions of square feet, was furnished by any of several commercial real estate companies, including CBRE Group, Cushman & Wakefield, JLL, and Newmark.
•  Jobs—The preferred sources for jobs figures were regional life sciences groups. Alternative sources included commercial real estate firms.

10. Chicagoland Chicagoland, which consists of Chicago and its suburbs, has a life sciences workforce big enough to rank sixth (about 88,000 according to the Illinois Biotechnology Industry Organization, or iBIO). Beyond jobs, Chicagoland ranks ninth in NIH funding (2,172 awards totaling $1.076 billion), patents (1,874), and venture capital ($1.7 billion consisting of $1.698 billion from 2020 to 2021 [iBIO] and $2.4 million in Q1 2022 [CipherBio]). The region finishes 10th in lab space with 1.6 million square feet, according to iBIO, which also reports 1.3 million square feet of lab space under construction and 5.3 million square feet of proposed new life sciences developments.

9. North Carolina (including Raleigh-Durham and Research Triangle Park) Raleigh-Durham and Research Triangle Park anchor a North Carolina life sciences presence that ranks fifth in NIH funding (2,716 awards totaling $1.899 billion). The Tar Heel State’s growing list of biopharma projects have moved it a notch to seventh in lab space (15.7 million square feet, according to Colliers)—and with 4,800 jobs announced in 2021 and 1,300 in Q1 2022, North Carolina should rise well above its number nine jobs ranking. (The total jobs figure is 70,000, according to the North Carolina Biotechnology Center.) The state ranks 10th in patents (1,851) and venture capital ($998.53 million consisting of $956.83 million in 2020–2021 [NC Biotech Center] plus $41.7 million in Q1 2022 [CipherBio]).

8. Seattle Seattle’s life sciences sector, which has long boasted top-tier research institutions and universities, also excels at fostering the growth of companies—which explains its fourth place showing in venture capital ($6.065 billion from 2020 through Q1 2022, according to industry group Life Science Washington). Seattle is seventh in patents (2,461) and eighth in both NIH funding (1,605 awards totaling $1.168 billion) and lab space (15 million square feet, according to JLL). However, Seattle and vicinity only place 10th in jobs (nearly 40,000, according to Life Science Washington).

7. Greater Philadelphia Greater Philadelphia places sixth in three of GEN’s five criteria for ranking U.S. biopharma clusters: Lab space (21.3 million square feet, according to Colliers), NIH funding (2,772 awards totaling $1.379 billion), and patents (5,511). The City of Brotherly Love and its suburbs—which extend into parts of southern New Jersey and northern Delaware—place eighth in jobs (71,539, according to the Chamber of Commerce for Greater Philadelphia’s Select Greater Philadelphia Council) and eighth in venture capital ($1.965 billion consisting of $1.93 billion from 2020 to 2021 [Select Greater Philadelphia] and $35 million in Q1 2022 [CipherBio]).

6. Los Angeles / Orange County, CA LA/Orange leads the nation in life sciences jobs (187,152 according to statewide life sciences industry group BIOCOM; 103,530 according to California Life Sciences based on a KPMG analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages data). The region anchored by the “City of Angels” places sixth in venture capital ($4.467 billion consisting of $3.8 billion in 2020-2021 [regional industry group BioscienceLA based on data from Newmark and PitchBook] and $666.745 million in Q1 2022 [PitchBook]). LA/Orange is also seventh in NIH funding (2,161 awards totaling $1.299 billion), eighth in patents (1,999) and ninth in lab space (11.2 million square feet, according to Newmark).

5. San Diego The region anchored by the Plymouth of the West continued to rank higher in venture capital than in other categories. In venture capital, it ranked third ($8.439 billion consisting of $3.619 billion in 2020 [PwC] and $4.82 billion in 2021 and Q1 2022 [CipherBio]), behind Boston/Cambridge and San Francisco. San Diego placed fourth in patents, edging out the third-ranked BioHealth Capital Region by a single patent (6,400), fifth in lab space (22.3 million square feet, according to CBRE), seventh in jobs (72,403 according to BIOCOM; 52,952 according to California Life Sciences based on a KPMG analysis of statistics from the U.S. Department of Labor), and 10th in NIH funding (1,783 awards totaling $1.038 billion).

4. BioHealth Capital Region [Maryland/Virginia/Washington, D.C.] The Maryland/Virginia/Washington, DC, BioHealth Capital Region (BHCR) benefits from anchors ranging from Johns Hopkins University to the headquarters of the FDA and NIH. BHCR aims to be a top-three region by 2023, a goal the region has already accomplished in NIH funding (3,992 awards totaling $2.536 billion), patents (6,401), and lab space—35.5 million square feet, according to JLL, which along with Cushman & Wakefield include the 9.2 million square feet of lab space within the NIH Campus headquarters in Bethesda, MD. The region is fourth in jobs (117,378, according to JLL) and sixth in venture capital ($2.384 billion consisting of $2.8 billion in 2020–2021 [JLL data cited by BHCR] and $92.295 million [PitchBook]).

3. New York / New Jersey New York City’s longtime strength, its critical mass of academic research institutions, propels it to the top among regions for NIH funding (5,287 awards totaling $3.326 billion). New York/New Jersey finishes third in jobs (128,000, according to CBRE), fourth in lab space (23.8 million square feet of which 79% was in New Jersey, according to Colliers), and fifth in venture capital ($4.862 billion consisting of $2.4 billion in 2020 [PitchBook] and $2.462 billion in 2021 and Q1 2022 [CipherBio]) and patents (5,807). New York City expects 10 million square feet of lab space to come online in the next 10–15 years.

2. San Francisco Bay Area The Bay Area is closer than ever to recapturing the top spot it held in GEN’s first U.S. cluster list in 2014. While the region’s sole number-one ranking is in patents (13,550), San Francisco and vicinity rank a close second in jobs (178,958, according to BIOCOM), lab space (46.2 million square feet, according to Cushman & Wakefield), and venture capital ($16.372 billion consisting of $7.068 billion in 2020 [PitchBook] and $9.304 billion in 2021 and Q1 2022 [CipherBio]). The region lags in NIH funding, where it remains fourth (4,236 awards totaling $2.266 billion).

1. Boston / Cambridge, MA While its lead over the San Francisco Bay Area has narrowed of late, Boston/Cambridge remains the nation’s top biopharma cluster thanks to number-one rankings in lab space (49.1 million square feet according to CBRE) and especially venture capital ($23.592 billion consisting of $21.6 billion from 2020 to 2021, according to the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council [MassBio] and $1.992 billion in Q1 2022 [CipherBio]). The region is second, behind San Francisco, in NIH funding (5,666 awards totaling $3.172 billion) and patents (10,119), but it ranks only fifth in jobs (104,000, according to CBRE). MassBio tallied 84,296 biotech jobs statewide in 2020.

Previous Lists 2015-2021

Top 10 U.S. Biopharma Clusters 2021

Top 10 U.S. Biopharma Clusters 2019

Top 10 U.S. Biopharma Clusters 2018

Top 10 U.S. Biopharma Clusters 2017

Top 10 U.S. Biopharma Clusters 2016

Top 10 U.S. Biopharma Clusters 2015

Top 10 U.S. Biopharma Clusters 2014

The post Top 10 U.S. Biopharma Clusters appeared first on GEN - Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News.

The field made its way into the mainstream of genomic science when, under the term spatially resolved transcriptomics, it was unanimously recognized in January by editors of Nature as Method of the Year 2020: “This maintenance of spatial context is crucial for understanding key aspects of cell biology, developmental biology, neurobiology, tumor biology and more, as specialized cell types and their specific organization are crucially tied to biological activity and remain poorly explored on the scale of whole tissues and organisms.

Spatially resolved transcriptomics technology is being applied by large consortia, such as the Human Cell Atlas and Brain Initiative Cell Census Network (BICCN), with the ultimate goal of generating complete maps of large and complex tissues like the human brain, Nature also noted.

But to professionals in the specialty, the thrill of spatial biology is less about the numbers, or the recognition from a top-tier journal, than about the discoveries its technologies have made possible.

Two professionals discussed spatial biology at a September 2021 GEN Keynote Webinar, “Spatial Biology Redefines the Multiomics Approach”: Joe Beechem, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer and Senior Vice President of Research and Development at NanoString Technologies; and Arutha Kulasinghe, PhD, a Research Fellow and Leader of the spatial biology and liquid biopsy group at the University of Queensland’s Diamantina Institute in Australia.

“If you’re looking at an immune response, are those immune cells actually attacking a tumor cell or attacking a cell that is infected with coronavirus? These are things that you can figure out from spatial technologies that you could not figure out from previous technologies,” Yoni Bock, PhD, Associate VP of Reagents R&D with Vizgen, said June 16 on “GEN Live,” GEN’s monthly live-streaming video discussion series.

Vizgen is among companies appearing below in GEN’s first-ever top-10 A-List for spatial biology—the five largest public companies and five largest private companies—updated as of April 8. The public companies are ranked by their 2021 revenues as disclosed in regulatory filings, including sales of products or services, as well as revenue from collaborations and R&D activity. Private companies are ranked by the total capital they have raised, as disclosed by the companies themselves, either in press statements or in responses to GEN queries verifying figures compiled by other sources.

Also included in this list are eight “up-and-comers” that have either raised significant capital in recent months, shown positive data for their technologies, and/or launched significant new collaborations with partners.

Each company is listed with a short explanation of their recent activity.

TOP PUBLIC COMPANIES

5. Akoya Biosciences
Revenue: $54.917 million in 2021; $42.443 million in 2020

Akoya Biosciences went public in April 2021, raising approximately $138.2 million in net proceeds via IPO. Since then, Akoya—which calls itself “The Spatial Biology Company—has joined microscope providers Nikon, CrestOptics, and Andor Technology to develop new spatial biology applications, and broaden access to Akoya’s PhenoCycler (Formerly CODEX^®) single-cell multiplexed imaging solution through the the company’s Imaging Innovator’s (I2) Network of customer collaborators. Akoya also began partnering with AstraZeneca to advance new multiplex immunofluorescence (mIF) workflows and spatial biomarker signatures based on Akoya’s PhenoImager HT (formerly Phenoptics^®) platform, aiming to elucidate the immune biology of cancer. PhenoImager HT was highlighted in the MITRE study, published in July 2021, in the Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer, the first multi-institutional analytical demonstration of a spatial biology workflow. On March 14, 2022, Akoya reported a 29% year-over-year 2021 revenue jump, to $54.917 million, though its net loss more than doubled, to $42.935 million from $16.706 million in 2020.

Fluidigm said April 1 that its shareholders had approved a $250 million strategic capital infusion from investors Casdin Capital and Viking Global Investors, which according to the company will help identify growth and cost opportunities for the company following the rebound of its base business during 2021. That rebound was driven by early customer orders for its new fourth-generation CyTOF^® XT mass cytometry product. Two other Fluidigm technologies—Imaging Mass Cytometry (IMC) and the Maxpar^® Direct Immune Profiling Assay—will be applied by the Abu Dhabi Stem Cells Center (ADSCC) for development of targeted stem cell therapies and research applications through a collaboration announced in February. In August 2021, Fluidigm inked a co-marketing agreement with privately-held Ultivue, through which the companies will offer imaging solutions for biomarker discovery and drug development.

NanoString marked a milestone in the fourth quarter, as its nCounter instrument business grew its installed base to approximately 1,050 as of December 31, 2021, up 11% year-over-year. NanoString ended 2021 with a $115.254 million GAAP net loss (about $5 million more than 2020) on revenues that climbed 24% year-over-year, to $145.085 million in March. Another bright spot: NanoString recorded $18 million of GeoMx^® Digital Spatial Profiler (DSP) instrument revenue, 48% year-over-year growth. The GeoMx installed base grew to approximately 255 GeoMx DSP Systems at December 31, 2021, representing 96% growth over 2020. The Whole Transcriptome Atlas (WTA) has driven a steady increase in demand for GeoMx consumables since its launch last year at the Third Annual Spatial Genomics Summit, reflected in 226% year-over-year growth to $17.1 million in 2021 consumables revenue.

2. 10x Genomics
Revenue: $490.490 million in 2021; $298.8 million in 2020

10x Genomics maintained its torrid growth pace in the fourth quarter, with revenues jumping 64% year-over-year to $490.490 million, and net losses narrowing to $58.223 million (from $542.731 million in 2020). In October 2021, 10x celebrated the grand opening of its Singapore manufacturing facility and commercial hub. In July, 10x launched its next-generation Chromium X Series for single cell analysis, enabling routine million cell experiments to run at 2 cents per cell. 10x has since announced plans to launch Chromium Fixed RNA Profiling and Chromium Nuclei Isolation products in mid-2022, as well as Chromium BEAM (Barcode Enabled Antigen Mapping) late this year. In June, 10x began shipping its new Visium Spatial Gene Expression for FFPE (formalin-fixed and paraffin-embedded) assay, giving researchers access to the whole transcriptome across their entire tissue.

1. Bruker
Revenue: $2.418 billion in 2021; $1.988 billion in 2020

Bruker has established a spatial biology beachhead over the past year, in part through a majority investment in Acuity Spatial Genomics, formed in March to advance spatial 3D genomics and multiomic analyses for discovery. Bruker invested $4.5 million, it disclosed in a regulatory filing. Acuity exclusively licenses from Harvard University its technology platform, designed to enable genome-wide visualization of spatially resolved 3D chromatin architecture in individual cells and cell populations in situ. In September 2020, Bruker acquired Canopy Biosciences, whose products and services include spatial biology. On August 5, the University of Pittsburgh added Canopy’s ChipCytometry to its Unified Flow Core in the Department of Immunology, to advance high-plex single-cell spatial biology research by quantifying cell phenotypes and their spatial relationships within the native tissue microenvironment.

TOP PRIVATE COMPANIES

5. Nucleai
Total Capital Raised: “Close to” $50 million

Nucleai said March 22 that it completed a $33 million Series B financing round jointly led by Section 32 and Sanofi Ventures, with participation by existing investors that included Debiopharm, Fosun RZ Capital, Vertex Ventures, and Grove Ventures. The company said it plans to use the new funding to further develop its platform and expand its commercial footprint across biopharmaceutical companies and contract research organizations (CROs), which are applying its technology throughout translational research, clinical trials, and novel applications for drug discovery. Founded four years ago, Nucleai has raised “close to” $50 million. Last September, it launched a strategic collaboration with Jefferson Health to discover spatial immunotherapy biomarkers, leveraging Nucleai’s ATOM platform and Jefferson’s repository of pathology and clinical data.

4. Vizgen
Total Capital raised: $51 million

Vizgen in January launched the broad commercial availability of its MERSCOPE Platform across the U.S., and released a second, open-access data set, the MERFISH Mouse Liver Map, along with an interactive web-based data visualization platform. MERSCOPE is designed to offer researchers insights into tissue-scale basic research and translational medicine in oncology, immunology, neuroscience, infectious disease, developmental biology, cell therapy, and gene therapy. In May 2021, Vizgen released the Vizgen MERFISH Mouse Brain Receptor Map, the first of a series of datasets made available through Vizgen’s Data Release Program. Also last year, Vizgen established a Scientific and Technical Advisory Board and named to it Susan Tousi, Illumina’s Chief Commercial Officer.

3. Lunaphore Technologies
Total Capital Raised: CHF 60 million ($65 million)

Bringing spatial technology into mainstream labs studying cancer and other diseases is the goal of Lunaphore Technologies. In February, Lunaphore announced the successful installation of its COMET PA instrument at Sweden’s SciLifeLab. As part of Lunaphore’s commercial strategy in 2022, both a new COMET PA and a LabSat^® were installed at SciLifeLab—products integrated into the facility’s research infrastructure service offering, as well as ongoing research on colon and lung cancer. Also in February, Lunaphore partnered with Massachusetts General Hospital to develop an in vitro diagnostic (IVD) that evaluates sensitivity of solid tumors to poly-ADP ribose polymerase (PARP) inhibitors, with an initial focus on ovarian, breast and prostate cancers.

2. RareCyte
Total Capital Raised: $99.3 million

RareCyte’s sales business enjoyed more than 100% sales growth during 2021, a year during which the company completed a $24 million financing from new and existing investors. RareCyte says its Precision Biology solutions offer multiplexed analysis of cells and tissue for customers performing single cell applications in oncology and disease research to bring new therapeutics and diagnostic assays to market. In June, RareCyte announced a biomarker liquid biopsy assay for the neuroendocrine marker synaptophysin (SYP), designed to help customers evaluate SYP expression on circulating tumor cells (CTCs). The assay entails processing blood to slides with the AccuCyte^® Sample Preparation System followed by staining with the RarePlex^® 0920-VB Synaptophysin CTC Panel Kit, enabling blood-based investigation of a prominent mechanism by which tumors become resistant to second-line endocrine therapies.

1. Ultivue
Total Capital Raised: Over $100 million

With the addition of new executive team members in 2021 and over $100 million of funding raised to date, Ultivue has targeted spatial biology innovation to support much-needed biological insights from solid tumors. Its customers address the challenge of therapeutic response rates in patients undergoing immunotherapy using a bespoke kit-based approach that enables multiplex biomarker assays for tissue phenotyping and digital pathology. The company’s proprietary InSituPlex^® technology is designed for quick and comprehensive exploration of biologically relevant markers combined with same slide-H&E analysis to provide more data from precious tissue samples. The entire assay can be run manually or on multiple different commercially available hardware platforms to support academic, biopharma, and CRO customers. In March, Ultivue and Aignostics launched a partnership to co-develop artificial intelligence (AI)-powered spatial multiplexed immunophenotype solutions for translational research groups and biopharma companies.

UP & COMERS

Advanced Cell Diagnostics (ACD)
When Bio-Techne acquired Advanced Cell Diagnostics (ACD) in 2016 for up to $325 million, it envisioned expanding into genomics technology and within clinical labs. One way ACD has helped Bio-Techne fulfill those goals has been through spatial biology, where the company in July 2021 expanded its RNAscope HiPlex platform, an advanced, in situ hybridization (ISH) tool created to understand vital gene expression patterns at single cell resolution. A month later, ACD announced that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) used RNAscope to visualize SARS-CoV-2 RNA directly in the autopsied tissues of suspected COVID-19 patients. RNAscope HiPlex v2 is designed to generate precise gene expression data, enabling comprehensive spatial studies from 12 targets in FFPE samples and up to 48 targets in Fresh and Fixed Frozen sample types.

Dovetail Genomics
Dovetail Genomics, an EdenRoc Sciences company that specializes in high-quality de novo genome assembly, announced a partnership of undisclosed value February 24 with Element Biosciences, developer of a new and disruptive DNA sequencing platform. The partnership is designed to demonstrate the value and performance of Dovetail’s proximity ligation-based next-generation sequencing (NGS) library prep solutions on Element’s AVITI System. Dovetail Genomics’ products and services are designed to capture 3D genome architecture alongside primary sequence information using NGS approaches. In January, Dovetail began partnering with Singular Genomics, developer of the G4 sequencing platform, to validate Dovetail’s proximity ligation kit portfolio in order to unlock access to 3-D genome architecture at the nucleosome level, which according to the company is critical for understanding the regulation of gene expression.

Ionpath
Ionpath survived a legal challenge from Fluidigm in March when, by joint motion of the companies, the US District Court for the Northern District of California dismissed a Fluidigm appeal of an earlier decision that Ionpath’s MIBIscope technology did not infringe on Fluidigm patents. Also in March, Australia’s Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research said it would purchase a MIBIscope using a A$3.5 million ($2.6 million) Australian Cancer Research Foundation grant designed to fund creation of a multidisciplinary cancer research team focused on improving patient treatment options and investigating the cause of drug resistance. In January, Ionpath highlighted a paper published in Cell detailing how researchers deployed MIBI-TOP (multiplexed ion beam imaging by time of flight) to resolve precise cell locations, compositions, and functions using 37 proteins of interest.

Single Technologies
Single Technologies, whose 3-D sequencing technology is designed to enable both spatial and next-generation sequencing, brought its total capital raised to €5 million (about $6 million) in December 2020 by completing a heavily oversubscribed financing. Single was founded in 2014 following research in single-molecule imaging and biotechnology applications at Stockholm’s Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) combined with R&D in fiberoptic grating by founders of Proximion. Single raised a SEK15 million ($1.7 million) convertible loan in 2020. CEO Johan Strömqvist has said Single aims to open its first data sequencing production site in Stockholm by 2022.

Singular Genomics
Singular Genomics Systems launched its G4 benchtop sequencing platform in December 2021, promising to mount a serious challenge to longtime next-generation sequencing (NGS) leader Illumina by competing with two of Illumina’s top systems and appealing to customers seeking an alternative. Singular asserts that the G4 lives up to the company’s name in several ways, starting with its power output ranging from of 15 to 400 gigabases (Gb)—delivering at the high end up to 3x more data output per hour than other benchtop instruments—with run times for typical NGS applications starting at about five hours, up to between 16 and 19 hours for four complete human genomes. Singular said in March it was on track to begin shipping G4 instruments and F2 flow cell kits in the second quarter.

S2 Genomics
A manufacturer of automated tissue sample preparation systems, launched the Singulator 100 System, designed to automate the processing of solid tissue samples into suspensions of single cells or nuclei with high yields and from small samples for a wide range of single-cell biology and genomic analyses. The company followed up on its launch through distribution agreements with partners in Asia-Pacific, Canada, and Europe. In February, S2 entered into a collaborative marketing agreement of undisclosed value with S2 Genomics to co-promote Singulator 100 with Applied Cells’ MARS^® Acoustics and Magnetic technologies as a complete workflow for tissue sample preparation.

Veranome Biosystems
Veranome Biosystems, an Applied Materials company, entered a collaboration and licensing agreement of undisclosed value with Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) in January that expanded the company’s spatial omics intellectual property portfolio into unbiased in-situ sequencing to address a broader set of applications with the Veranome Spatial Analyzer. The licensed portfolio includes BARseq in-situ sequencing assays and associated data analytics. Veranome and CSHL are developing a range of new applications using BARseq technology, particularly in neuroscience for highly multiplexed long-range neuro-mapping assays.

Visikol, a BICO Company
Visikol provides biopharmas with contract research services that include 3D cell culture, 3D tissue imaging, multiplex imaging, and digital pathology services. NJ-based Visikol was acquired in May 2021 for $7.5 million cash and stock by Swedish-based CELLINK (since rebranded BICO), the parent of 14 companies encompassing “bioconvergence” of biology, engineering, big data and AI. On March 14, Visikol said it is partnering with Molecular Instruments (MI) to offer HCR-based RNA FISH and IHC multiplex tissue imaging to its existing multiplex imaging service offering, enabling researchers to survey both multiplex protein expression and gene expression on the same slide.

*This table was updated – April 8, 2022.

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Investors would do better to look at what’s happening with the many electronic transfer funds (ETFs) specializing in biotech stocks. These ETFs have been sinking since the fall. Indeed, lower ETFs were cited in a GEN article, “Top 5 Reasons behind the Biopharma Bear Market,” that appeared on February 14. Between the time that article appeared to March 7, the largest ETF—the iShares Nasdaq Biotechnology ETF (IBB)—fell from $131.80 to $120.62. That was an 8.5% drop. (The new value was 30% less than the IBB’s record high of $172.60, which was reached on February 8, 2021.)

The decline was worse on the SPDR S&P Biotech ETF (XBI), which dropped 11% in the month ending March 7, from $94.36 to $83.76, losing more than half its value (52%) from its record high of $173.99 on February 8, 2021.

Notwithstanding the biotech bear market of recent months, the total market capitalization of the 25 biotech firms with the highest market capitalization or “market cap” as of March 4 actually rose year over year to $1.498 trillion. But the increase was small (up nearly 4% from $1.445 trillion in March 2021) compared with jumps of 55.5% from the aggregate $963.495 billion reported by GEN’s “Top 25 Biotech Companies of 2019,” and 63% from the $918.85 reported by GEN’s “Top 25 Biotech Companies of 2018.”

Among the top 25 biotech companies, gainers of market cap (14) outnumbered losers (11). Interestingly, not one of the 77 companies that priced initial public offerings during 2021 (according to IPOScoop.com) placed in the top 25—a possible early sign that investors were less than willing to flock to newly public companies.

This A-List presents GEN’s updated list of 25 biotech companies, ranked by their market cap as of March 4, 2022, as indicated by the exchanges on which the companies’ shares are traded, or by other publicly available sources. Each company is listed by rank, name, market cap in billions of dollars, and percentage change from last year. (Figures are rounded off to the nearest tenth.)

Companies headquartered outside the United States accounted for more than half (13) of the companies ranked on this year’s top 25 list biotech companies, one less than on GEN’s 2019 A-List. Of the 13 headquartered outside the United States, three are based in China, two in South Korea, two in Denmark, and one each in Australia, Belgium, Germany, India, Japan, and Switzerland (but not including a second company with a Swiss headquarters since it also maintains headquarters in the United States).

The smallest company listed this year has a market cap of just over $14 billion, compared with just over $10 billion for the 25th ranked company on GEN’s 2019 list.

Just missing the list at number 26 is BioMarin Pharmaceutical, which had a market cap of $13.93 billion on March 4, followed by Exact Sciences ($12.37 billion), whose market cap has fallen by nearly half (46%) from last year’s value ($23.06 billion), and Viatris ($11.95 billion), the company formed by the merger of Mylan (number 25 on GEN’s 2019 list) and Pfizer’s Upjohn division.

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Much of this opportunity is being seized by two companies, Moderna and BioNTech, which went public in 2018 and 2019, respectively. They rose to prominence quickly, and they now outshine other public companies in their space.

The opportunities for RNA-based biopharma companies aren’t limited to COVID-19-fighting products. RNA-based pipelines are expanding to address other maladies. For example, Moderna has developed a cytomegalovirus vaccine that is now entering a Phase III trial.

Also standing to make billions are companies that have launched RNA-
related collaborations. Just six days into the new year, Genentech agreed to
apply Ribometrix’s discovery platform to develop small-molecule drug candidates against RNA targets. Ribometrix could earn more than $1 billion from the collaboration.

In May, Eli Lilly and Company committed up to $1.25 billion to partner with MiNA Therapeutics in developing small activating RNA drugs for up to five targets across Lilly’s key therapeutic areas of cancer, diabetes, immunology, neurodegenerative diseases, and pain. Four months later, Lilly launched an up-to-$1.3 billion partnership with ProQR that will also pursue up to five targets by developing editing oligonucleotides.

This article updates our list of top RNA-based biopharma companies. It encompasses not only developers of RNA-based drugs and vaccines, but also developers of RNA-based platform technologies.

Public companies are ranked by their combined revenues for 2020 and 2021 (mostly the first through third quarters) as disclosed in regulatory filings. Private companies are ranked by the total capital they have raised, as disclosed by the companies themselves, either in press statements or in responses to our queries. Companies that did not respond to our queries are listed with the highest figure published by an outside source. Also included in this list are several “up and comers” that have either raised significant capital in recent months, shown positive data for their technologies, and/or launched significant new collaborations with partners.

Source: Alex Philippidis/GEN

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