Among the plethora of biosciences companies in top NIH award state Massachusetts is Vertex, which maintains a headquarters and R&D site in Boston in addition to the Jeffrey Leiden Center for Biologics, Cell and Genetic Therapies elsewhere in the city and other cell & genetic therapies R&D sites in Cambridge and Watertown.
Photo courtesy of Vertex
A coalition of top research institutions, patient and health advocates, and companies earlier this year published its annual analysis of jobs and economic activity supported by National Institutes of Health (NIH) research funding distributed to all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.
How do top states for NIH funding correlate with top locations for biotech and life sciences?
Very well. Very well indeed.
United for Medical Research counts among its members such institutions as MIT, Stanford University, Johns Hopkins University, Washington University in St. Louis and Northwestern University; organizations such as the Alzeheimer’s Association and the Association of American Cancer Institutes; and companies such as AdvaMed, BD, Johnson & Johnson and ThermoFisher Scientific.
The overall report finds NIH research funding supported 407,782 jobs and produced $94.58 billion in economic activity in FY2024 — or $2.56 of economic activity for every $1 of research funding. Since Fiscal Year 2015, the NIH budget has grown by more than $17 billion “thanks to strong bipartisan congressional support and a commitment to making medical research a critical national priority,” UMR stated. “Over the past decade, NIH research funding has driven more than $787 billion in new economic activity and supported an average of more than 370,000 jobs a year.”
UMR says analysis for the report was performed by Ronald Horst of Inforum with calculations of the jobs and economic activity resulting from NIH research awards in each state relying heavily on the Regional Input-Output Modeling System (RIMS) parameters maintained by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA).
Certainly some of the top states in NIH funding are the envy of others when it comes to an active biotech economy. Here are the top 10 by NIH funding:
| State | NIH AWARDS ($M) | Jobs Created per $1M NIH Awards | TOTAL EMPLOYMENT | ECONOMIC ACTIVITY ($M) |
| California | 5,151.1 | 9.1 | 55,324.4 | 13,812.8 |
| New York | 3,548.1 | 7.3 | 30,521.9 | 8,269.2 |
| Massachusetts | 3,458.8 | 8.2 | 30,110.7 | 7,761.9 |
| Maryland | 2,432.1 | 8.8 | 22,567.1 | 5,304 |
| Pennsylvania | 2,204.3 | 8.9 | 21,740 | 5,311.3 |
| North Carolina | 1,975.5 | 10 | 21,769 | 4,853 |
| Texas | 1,897.5 | 12.3 | 30,553.3 | 6,126.8 |
| Illinois | 1,275.3 | 10.1 | 15,553.2 | 3631.8 |
| Washington | 1,260.4 | 8.3 | 12,250.3 | 3089.2 |
Biotech is prominent in — if not central to — the economy of every one of those 10 states, with NIH awards leaders California and No. 3 Massachusetts routinely acknowledged to be Nos. 1 or 2 in the biosciences sector.
“There is no better investment than one that saves lives, supports local economies and drives America’s global leadership in biomedical innovation,” said UMR President Caitlin Leach in March on the report’s release. “When Congress invests strongly and consistently in the NIH, all three of those things happen … UMR is very concerned about recent actions and proposals that would result in drastic reductions in funded research, including clinical trials, and greatly diminish NIH’s effectiveness. Such moves jeopardize lives, local communities and U.S. industries. We urge Congress and the Trump Administration to work together to ensure that America’s long-standing and highly successful biomedical innovation ecosystem, which has a strong and well-funded NIH at its center, remains the envy of the world.”
Vertex also has a major facility in San Diego in the top-ranked NIH awards state of California.
Photo courtesy of Vertex
