It's the end of Kendall Square as we know it. What if biotech never bounces back?

Boston Globe

14-04-2025

But when he was laid off in the summer of 2024, it didn't feel like it was enough. He felt financially stressed. He heard that hiring managers received
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What we're witnessing may be a remaking of biotech — surprising even to those in the industry. After five months of searching, Albert ultimately found a job at a small Boston-based biotech, where he focuses on cancer research. But
In Massachusetts, biotech has been an important driver of jobs and wealth for decades, with Kendall Square at the epicenter of that growth. In 2024, the state had more than 140,000 jobs in the life sciences,
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America has seen entire industries slip away before, notes Sandra Barbosu, associate director of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington. Her recent report, '
'I think it is actively happening,' said Isaac Stoner, chief executive of Boston-based Octagon Therapeutics. 'When an industry goes extinct or faces this existential moment, it causes broad economic pain for the region for a while. This happened when we lost our leadership position in computing in the late eighties and early nineties. It was maybe a 15-year period where there wasn't an industry to step in there and fill the void.'
Certainly, over the last few years, we've seen
Cambridge-based Biogen, for example, has had multiple rounds of
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The Biogen headquarters in Cambridge.
Vanessa Leroy/Bloomberg
So where are the jobs going? In a word, China. (Though there are also jobs heading to other countries, including India.) And with every passing year, companies outsource more of their lab work to lower-cost countries. That means that many traditional jobs in labs — from research chemists to process technicians, quality control specialists to associate scientists — are evaporating. Some of these jobs require specialized undergraduate training; others require master's or doctoral degrees.
Predictably, the number of drugs in development in China has surged. In 2014, Chinese companies had fewer than 500 drugs in development, a far cry from the nearly 6,000 drugs that US companies had in development that year,
Fast forward a decade. By 2024, China had experienced massive growth, boasting more than 6,000 drugs in development. Meanwhile, the United States peaked at more than 9,000 drugs in development in 2022 and has dipped slightly since then.
In March, the pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca — which is working on opening a
'The drugs that we believe will be approved in the next five to 10 years, a larger proportion of them are going to be coming from China,' said George Voren, vice president of founder strategy and operations at venture firm Curie.Bio. 'Meaning the discovery of them is coming from China. And not necessarily the biotech labs in Cambridge.'
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A key reason that American companies work with Chinese labs is that they have scientists who are on staff and ready to go. That means, Voren said, a company 'can immediately get work started and make progress,' rather than 'building your own lab and spending six months to hire people.' (Though, as we've seen with other industries, there may be concerns about the safety of intellectual property.)
Multiple people I spoke with said these trends will be exacerbated by the Trump administration's efforts to
Opler said some biotech investors have historically believed that Boston sits at the epicenter of innovation, and China just copies our breakthroughs. The thinking goes like this, he said: 'Here in Boston, we're next to The Broad, we're next to MIT, we've got Harvard.' But after traveling to China in March, Opler concluded: 'That view is no longer accurate. In a very short period of time, you're seeing Chinese companies move at lightning speed into areas of high innovation in the biopharmaceutical industry.'
Opler argues that biotech remains a global growth industry — making him less concerned about overall employment, though the skills needed to secure a job may shift. Still, he said, companies face 'an existential threat' if they don't become more efficient, meaning they may have to outsource certain jobs simply to survive.
Losing jobs does not mean that venture capitalists or executives will necessarily leave Massachusetts. But while we might retain those who make millions of dollars a year, we risk permanently losing the legions of jobs that pay $100,000, $200,000, or $300,000 a year.
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Some in the industry worry that we face the prospect of Kendall Square operating with a fraction of the folks who work there now.
Lane Turner/Globe Staff
So what happens to the Boston area if biotech jobs largely slip away? Stoner said he's seeing signs of 'a white-collar recession, where these people with very specialized degrees and very specialized training are having a hard time finding their next position. I run a big networking group, and I'm just seeing the number of folks there job-hunting going up and up and up. It makes me uncomfortable.'
Apart from job losses, the character of Cambridge, Somerville, and other biotech hotspots may shift.
Amarante points out that many landlords can't reduce prices enough to make a deal with prospective tenants — doing so would violate the terms of their own financial obligations. And he believes that will force more and more buildings into foreclosure. One problem for landlords, Amarante said, is that when potential renters tour large lab buildings that are empty or nearly empty, they realize 'it can create a post-apocalyptic experience for their team, and no one wants that.'
If large swaths of lab space remain empty, Stoner worries about 'decay of various neighborhoods. And that drives down real estate prices. And it just kind of has this slow rolling effect.'
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I asked Stoner if anything could be done to turn the tide in biotech. He said the United States would have to turn to 'brutal protectionist measures.'
wouldn't be enough. It would have to be 'things like the FDA saying: 'We are not going to review your drug if the data was generated in China.''
Opler said making pharmaceuticals in China can prove tremendously cost-effective. In a conversation with a CEO who makes an ingredient for aspirin, Opler asked if he was worried about
And for lots of companies, that's the bottom line. 'If I'm a top 10 or top 20 global pharma company,' Stoner said, 'I don't care where the innovation comes from at the end of the day. I have no incentive to make sure this cluster in Kendall Square remains the envy of the bio world.'
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