While Boston's Route 128 is one cluster model everyone wants to follow, the Northeast states offer more examples than that. Some might say the region's concentration of population, industry and traffic would make it more flustered than clustered, but the 2001 Ernst & Young ranking of biotech concentration ranked New England first as a region, followed by the distilled life sciences clusters of San Francisco and San Diego.
      In late November, Immunex Corp. broke ground for its new BioNext project in West Greenwich, R.I., a 500,000-sq.-ft. (46,450-sq.-m.) complex that will employ up to 700 workers making cell cultures, primarily for the company's ENBREL product.

A 2000 study by the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of America shows that while just 5-12 biotech drugs have been approved annually for the past few years, a backlog of 369 biotech drugs in clinical trials are ready to debut. U.S. drug development investment has grown from $2 billion in 1980 to $26.4 billion in 2001.

      "The BioNext Project demonstrates our commitment to continuous process improvements and capital investments that increase yields and production capacity," says Efi Cohen Arazi, senior vice president of supply operations at Immunex. "These are the cornerstones of successful biotechnology manufacturing operations."
      Immunex Executive Vice President and COO Peggy Phillips emphasized the company's "need for manufacturing pipeline products in the future" in breaking ground for the $500 million facility, to be constructed next to another plant that Immunex just purchased from a division of American Home Products. Completion is expected to come at about the same time that full FDA approval does in 2005.
      "Over the past six years, we've made it a priority to diversify our economy," said Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Almond. "We identified biotechnology as one of our state's growth industries. We've put incentives in place to ensure that Rhode Island is fertile ground for high-tech, cutting-edge business to locate. When a company like Immunex chooses to establish roots and branch out in Rhode Island, that's proof positive that we're achieving our goal."
      In East Windsor, N.J., Portugal-based Hovione is locating its first U.S. facility, a technology transfer center that will be operational by the second quarter of 2002. The company makes active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) and regulated generics. Hovione CEO Guy Villax noted in making the announcement that the firm wanted to grow organically rather than through acquisition in order to assure that the transfer to a linchpin market was truly seamless. His company's work force has double from 250 to 500 in the past five years, with a recent $15 million expansion of its facility in Macau, near Hong Kong, and renovations and improvements to its headquarters in Loures, Portugal, where another pilot plant is scheduled to start up by the end of 2002.
      New Jersey is home to another type of bio-facility. In December 2001, Merck-Medco opened a new kind of warehouse -- a 280,000-sq.-ft. (26,000-sq.-m.) automated pharmacy that will allow some 800 pharmacists and other staff to fill more than 40 million prescriptions a year. It's the 13th such facility for the organization, but by far the largest so far. Payroll at full employment will approach $35 million.
      Completed in the fall of 2001, the Pfizer Global Development Facility in New London, Conn., encompasses 1.3 million sq. ft. (120,770 sq. m.). The work on the Pfizer facility was one of more than 60 projects for the company executed by Boston firm Haley & Aldrich, which has adapted construction methods for the fast tracks and sensitive conditions of the bio-pharmaceutical sector. Take excavation, for instance.
      "Controlled blasting can be done at less than half the cost of mechanical rock removal without compromising safety," says Pfizer Global Manufacturing's Bill Parent, adding that the method is not only faster, but less disruptive to nearby operations. Haley & Aldrich has also performed work in the sector for Merck's first New England project, a planned 12-story facility on the campus of Emmanuel College in Boston, as well as projects for Novartis Pharmaceuticals in New Jersey and Genetics Institute in Cambridge, Mass.
      Pfizer's reach has even extended into the lease and renovation of a waterfront apartment complex, as well as an agreement with the New London (Conn.) Development Corp. and developer Corcoran Jennison to rent 30 percent of the hotel rooms at a new hotel and conference center currently under construction.
      New York City officials are looking at the possibility of converting a Deutsche Bank AG building that was damaged in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks into a biotech facility. New York City Partnership President Kathy Wylde told the Wall Street Journal that efforts to develop start-ups have been held back by the cost of office and lab space in the past, and that a biotech facility might be a good fit with the recent diversification of downtown development from purely financial services firms to a mix that includes high-tech as well as residential space.
      But there are other centers of biotech in the Empire State. Gov. George E. Pataki and corporate officials from InforMax, Stryker, Veridian and Compaq were on hand in Buffalo in December to announce up to $150 million in private financing for a 150,000-sq.-ft. (14,000-sq.-m.) Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics near the city's medical campus, part of the governor's $1 billion plan for such centers across the state. U.S. Rep. Thomas Reynolds procured $3 million for the project as part of a federal defense appropriation bill, and State University of New York Chancellor Robert King noted how such centers will help the statewide institution in attracting up to $1.5 billion in new sponsored research over the next five years, further filling in the circle of manufacturing, R&D and workforce development. The University of Buffalo had already begun work last May on a $15.3 million research center focused on disease modeling and therapy discovery; around $1 million per year will be funneled toward the new Center for Advanced Biomedical and Bioengineering Technology announced last April.
      Back in Albany last November, Gov. Pataki signed into law a measure to help develop the 280-acre (113-ha.) Cornell Agriculture and Food Technology Park in the Finger Lakes region. And he also praised the ongoing construction of the $78 million Life Sciences Research Building at the University of Albany, made possible through his $3 billion plan for capital improvements to SUNY/CUNY campuses. The 194,000-sq.-ft. (18,000-sq.-m.) facility, built with $51 million in state funds so far, will house 39 different research groups when it is complete in 2004, and it's just the main part of a $100 million life sciences initiative.
      Massachusetts is still the leader in life sciences investment in New England, and it's not all in Boston proper. Recent announcements include a new genomics center to be developed by German specialty chemicals company Altana in Waltham, Mass., part of a worldwide expansion slated to add 2,000 people to the payroll by 2003, with most of that growth in pharmaceuticals. In November, transgenic technology firm TranXenoGen moved into its new 80,000-sq.-ft. (7,400-sq.-m.) facility in Shrewsbury. And the Massachusetts Biotech Research Park has grown to more than 800,000 sq. ft. (74,300 sq. m.), including the world headquarters of BASF BioResearch, since beating most of the world out of the starting gate when it opened in 1984.