Life Sciences

Formerly known as BremnerDuke, Duke Realty’s healthcare division has developed more than $1 billion in healthcare facilities for hospitals and health systems nationwide. But it’s the philanthropic work spun off from all those projects that is extending the firm’s reach beyond the U.S.

Melbourne is home to the largest cluster of life science companies in Australia, with 263 firms calling Victoria home. Over one-third of all companies listed on the Australian Securities Exchange’s Life Sciences and Biotech Index are in Melbourne, and more than 40 percent of the annual National Health and Medical Research Council funding budget, the equivalent of the National Institutes for Health, comes to Melbourne research organizations.

A little more than three years ago, the University of Michigan completed its $108 million acquisition of the former Pfizer campus in Ann Arbor and re-named the site the University of Michigan North Campus Research Complex. University officials estimated then that at least 2,000 jobs would be created over the next decade at the 174-acre site that encompasses nearly 2 million sq. ft. (185,800 sq. m.) of lab and office space in 28 buildings.

Multinational biopharmaceutical company Shire plans a major new campus in San Diego for its Shire Regenerative Medicine division, formerly known as Advanced BioHealing. Shire has signed a lease agreement with BioMed Realty Trust, a REIT that specializes in the life sciences industry.

To attendees of the 30th Summer Olympic Games in London (not to mention Londoners themselves), the most important underground asset is the city’s venerable Tube, operated by Transport for London. Due to celebrate its 150th anniversary next year, the system carries more than 1 billion passengers a year (more than the entire National Railway Network), and is in the midst of a major upgrade of all its lines.

The flagship universities of Kansas and Missouri are no longer in the same athletic conference, but the two states continue to slug it out on the economic development battlefield. One of the latest examples is Teva North America’s plans to move its Teva Neuroscience headquarters from Kansas City, Mo., to Overland Park, Kan., a Kansas City suburb just across the border.

While our economy struggles to recover from a severe recession and ongoing investor uncertainty, the bioscience industry is garnering attention globally and at home. In Kansas,where our economy is traditionally based on agriculture, aviation and the services industry, the significant growth in our bioscience sector has caught the eye of other states who are now working to duplicate economic development programs like the Kansas Economic Growth Act of 2004 and the Angel Tax Credit program.

The BIO International Convention held in Boston June 18-21 — at least the exhibition part of it — seemed to be about economic development pitches by states and nations as much as it was about science. The 34 country and 26 state pavilions all served as recruiting beachheads, manned by personnel trying to lure companies to their respective areas.

Collaboration is one of the primary objectives of many biotech firms attending the annual Biotechnology Industry Organization convention, held this year in Boston. One promising company with that objective is Pluristem, a developer of placenta-based cell therapies based in Haifa, Israel.

As home to more than 3,400 biotechnology R&D firms and manufacturing companies, Texas is one of the leading biotech states in the country. More than 84,100 workers are employed in the biotech sector in Texas, and dozens of global biotechnology companies, such as Novartis, Allergan, Inc., and Endo Pharmaceuticals, have major operations in the state. A concentration of highly trained biotech workers, multiple top-tier medical and research institutions, and a top-ranked business climate all strengthen the state’s status as a biotechnology leader.

How is the United States going to rein in health care costs, while still maintaining its competitive advantage in life science innovation? How are we going to provide adequate healthcare for seven billion — soon to be nine billion — people around the world?

BIO International Convention organizers are hoping for the usual surge in attendance provided by the Boston biotech community at the event scheduled for June 18-21 at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. While it may not reach the 22,000 level achieved at the last Boston BIO in 2007, it should surpass the 15,600 who came to last year’s event in Washington, D.C. Exhibitors will occupy more than 215,000 sq. ft of exhibit space.

State biotech associations are putting finishing touches on their exhibits and event planning for this year’s BIO International Convention set for the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center June 18-21. Twenty-three states, plus Puerto Rico, will have pavilions. They will be joined by 33 international pavilions promoting the industry in their respective countries and regions.

Rumbling bulldozers had barely scraped the sandy loam at the groundbreaking of Nephron Pharmaceuticals’ new South Carolina plant when CEO Lou Kennedy began talking about doing more.

In the May 2012 issue of Harvard Business Review, Anne Marie Knott, a former Hughes Aircraft engineer who serves as professor of strategy at Washington University’s Olin Business School in St. Louis, has published “The Trillion-Dollar R&D Fix.”

It was a time for bell ringing in Newton County, Ga. The promise of 1,500 new jobs meant that, in keeping with a tradition, a ceremonial bell would be rung 1,500 times. Baxter International is coming to town with its $1 billion-plus investment for a biologics manufacturing facility, and local officials and residents wanted to celebrate.

Medline, a Mundelein, Ill.-based manufacturer of adult incontinence products, has opened a new 600,000-sq.-ft. (55,740-sq.-m.) manufacturing facility in Douglasville, Ga. The $65-million plant will create 150 jobs.

If all you know about Nebraska is that cattle is our biggest industry — we lead the nation in commercial red meat production — or if your knowledge relates only to the Huskers’ chase for the college football championship every year, then you may be startled to learn that the bioscience industry is one of Nebraska’s fastest growing industries.

Kent is the English county called the Garden of England. Plant a seed in Kent and it will grow and flourish — apples, pears, cherries, grapes, strawberries, blackcurrants, almost every vegetable imaginable, oats, barley, grain … Kent feeds millions of people on a daily basis.

Projects aimed at producing fuel from algae continue to advance around the globe with the help of private and government funding. If and when algae-based fuels become commercially viable on a large scale, New Mexico could be one of the major centers of production. Sapphire Energy has built a large research and development center in Las Cruces and plans to commission a 100-acre algae field this spring near the southern New Mexico town of Columbus.

Skyscraper is not a commonly used term in Switzerland. Few buildings earn that moniker in a country that has mostly eschewed anything high-rise other than the Alps.

Bioscience is one of the fastest growth sectors in the U.S. economy. But by most accounts, Oregon has been a bit tardy to come to the bioscience table.

Europe’s reluctance to accept genetically modified foods is giving a boost to the fast-growing ag-bio sector in North Carolina. BASF announced on Jan. 16 that it was retreating from the European plant biotechnology market in favor of markets in North and South America. In the process, the company plans to move 123 positions to its Research Triangle Park campus over the next two years.

In North Carolina, we see that opportunity manifest in the bricks and mortar of corporate office buildings, in glass and steel of high-tech production facilities and in the faces of the workers at our more than 530 life-science companies.