Innovation doesn’t happen just anywhere. Here in the Bay State, a powerful confluence of factors over decades has made Massachusetts the place for groundbreaking science to take place. In labs, hospitals, and conference rooms across the state, scientists, researchers, entrepreneurs, and physicians are working together to transform ideas into lifesaving treatments. It’s this dense concentration of talent and organizations that has created an ecosystem industry leaders say is unmatched anywhere else in the world.

“You have scientists who can just walk across the river and talk to physicians at Mass General Hospital who are actually treating patients,” says Chris Viehbacher, chief executive at Biogen. “That proximity is a huge advantage.” 

Christoph Westphal, co-founder and general partner at the Boston-based Longwood Fund, agrees.

“Massachusetts is the epicenter of the miracle of modern medicine,” he says. “New medicines are either discovered here or developed here.” Westphal points to the last 20 years, when many of the world’s largest drugmakers arrived to tap into the hundreds of innovative biotech startups across the region.

That innovation is not abstract, leaders say. It’s measured in new drugs, targeted therapies, and, more recently, actual cures reaching patients who once had no options.

“There have been only a few situations in which a physician can look at the patient and say, ‘I can probably treat you so you never have to suffer from this disease again,’” says Phil Sharp, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist and co-founder of Massachusetts companies Biogen and Alnylam Pharmaceuticals. “The new technology that has developed through biotechnology over decades, and much of it in Massachusetts, has really made that possible.”

The numbers tell the story. Massachusetts attracts the most National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding per capita and is home to four of the top five independent hospitals in total NIH funding received last year. That’s according to data in the most recent report from MassBio, the state’s biotech association, which also shows Massachusetts as second only to California for total Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) awards and venture capital raised.

From idea to impact

Even in this favorable environment, the path from discovery to approved drug is long and complex. A promising molecule in a Petri dish must withstand years of testing before it can be prescribed to a patient. The process often takes more than a decade and billions of dollars, and there is no guarantee of success. In fact, close to 95 percent fail, but those failures fuel the successes.

The ultimate measure of success is not whether the drug is a moneymaker — it is the moment a patient receives the treatment. As Viehbacher puts it, “No matter all the investments we do in research and development, this business isn’t a success until the patient swallows the pill or gets the infusion.”

More than 15 percent of the national pipeline of drug candidates are at Massachusetts-based companies, and significantly more are being developed in labs located here by firms with local R&D, according to MassBio. “When you consider the amount of R&D space that large, global pharmaceutical companies have here, Massachusetts is punching way above our weight class in patient impact,” says Kendalle Burlin O’Connell, chief executive officer and president at MassBio.

The patient connection

While biotechnology is a highly technical field, its ultimate goal is deeply personal. Many in the industry work to bridge the gap between lab science and the human stories that illustrate its impact.

Abbie Celniker, a biotech veteran and partner at Third Rock Ventures, said that children are often moved when they hear stories about medicines that help other children. “If you tell kids a story and you tell them about making a medicine for a child who didn’t grow normally, and then all of a sudden that child could grow, that makes these kids so excited,” she says. “All of us are patients at some point in time ourselves.”

The advances made in Massachusetts are not just incremental improvements either. They are increasingly aimed at eliminating diseases entirely.

“When I came to Massachusetts in 1987, we were all hopeful about where the science could go, but we could never talk about cures,” says John Maraganore, a longtime biotech entrepreneur and executive chair at City Therapeutics. “It was a word that we all felt might create false hope about what we do. But now we can use the word because there are cures that are coming out of our industry.”

Maraganore cites recently approved drugs for sickle cell, beta thalassemia, and some cancers that have a nearly curative impact, all of which are connected to Massachusetts. The state has a higher percentage of advanced therapies in its pipeline than any ecosystem in direct competition, per MassBio’s report.

Deb Dunsire, a healthcare industry leader who started her career as a primary care physician, says oncology breakthroughs are already changing how patients live.

“The ability to say to patients today, ‘Yes, there is hope. There is hope for a long life. There’s hope for a life lived more normally, not lived in the shadow of chemotherapy,’” she says. “These targeted therapies have made an enormous difference.”

Looking ahead

Massachusetts’ biotech leaders believe that the advances seen so far are just the beginning.

“Biotechs had an enormous impact on health care through innovation and through discovery and invention,” says Sharp. “Here in Massachusetts, we’re only beginning the journey of the ultimate continuing impact of biotechnology on patients.”

According to MassBio’s Burlin O’Connell, while the industry is seeing a pullback in venture capital due to economic and policy uncertainty, the Massachusetts ecosystem is perfectly situated to be the place for biotech’s comeback, and that is great news for patients.

“From the labs of Kendall Square to the hospital wards of Boston, Massachusetts remains a place where scientific ideas become medicines — and where patients around the world feel the benefits,” O’Connell says.