New Haven may be approaching critical mass on the long path to becoming a regional and even national bioscience center of gravity along the lines of Cambridge, Mass. or San Diego.
That was the optimistic consensus offered by a panel of health-care and life-science executives Tuesday morning during a panel discussion on “How Health Care and Life Sciences Are Defining Greater New Haven and Responding to COVID19.” The conversation was part of the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce’s 18th annual Health Care & Life Sciences Awards Program held virtually via Zoom due to the public-health emergency.
Speaking of which, Connecticut has likely weathered the worst of the coronavirus pandemic that has paralyzed much of the world. But the crisis has also supercharged the state’s bioscience industry, which is pulling out all the stops in research-and-development related to the disease, including vaccine research and more cost-effective testing.
“We’re now down on the curve,” said Albert Ko, MD, who chairs the Yale School of Public Health’s Department of the Epidemiology of Microbial Disease and co-chair Gov. Ned Lamont’s Reopen CT committee.
At the peak of the epidemic some 2,000 state residents were hospitalized for COVID; that number is now down to (approximately) 200 statewide, Ko said. And in contrast to states such as Arizona and Florida that have recorded recent spikes in new cases, “In Connecticut, although we had a large epidemic, only a small proportion of people were exposed,” he said. “We have to avoid a situation of complacency.”
Erika R. Smith, CEO of New Haven’s ReNetX Inc., said that Connecticut “punches above our weight” in relation to the national bioscience industry. For example, she said, the state ranks fourth nationally in number of bioscience-related patents, third in per-capita venture capital investment in private companies in that industry sector, and third in academic and bioscience R&D expenditures per capita.
“There’s no argument that we have [bioscience] superstars here in Connecticut, and we are very poised,” Smith said.
It’s not just the Elm City. Todd E. Arnold, chief laboratory officer of Sema4, said his company now employs 80 people at its 1 Commercial St. lab in Branford, which by mid-April had ramped up to perform some 6,000 COVID-19 tests in partnership with the state. “I am definitely passionate about the growth of bioscience in Connecticut and about the way it’s growing in New Haven, along the Shoreline and statewide,” Arnold said. “We have both oars in the water.”
David Lehman, commissioner of the state’s Department of Economic & Community Development (DECD), said Connecticut’s bioscience ecosystem “is really centered around the New Haven area. I think it’s one of our biggest [economic-development] opportunities. I felt that way pre-COVID, and I feel even more that way now,” he said.
“You have this tremendous patent-generation and IP coming out of the New Haven area, primarily driven by Yale,” Lehman said. “What we as a state have done poorly is to commercialize it. We’ve created these ideas that could make money, but then they’ve been exported” elsewhere for commercialization.
“We’re working on creating an ecosystem where you can have the center of gravity in one place physically,” said Lehman, who cited the Yale New Haven Health system’s planned $869 million neuroscience center and creation of a 500,000-square-foot incubator to be developed at 101 College Street as prime examples of “transformational” projects taking shape in the near-term future. When projects like that come online, “you’ll be more likely to see people [bioscience professionals] staying here and people coming here” to work and to live, he added.
The panel discussion was moderated by Garrett Sheehan, president and CEO of the New Haven chamber.
