City Biotech Firms Ignore Recession

Even as tough economic news rocks Massachusetts, executives in the state's stable biotechnology industry--one of the largest sectors of Cambridge's economy--say that the business is still healthy and growing.

"A number of companies are on the verge of releasing a number of products. The industry's doing very well," says Michael Higgins, assistant to the president of Procept.

The relationship between Cambridge and the biotech industry has historically been mutually beneficial. The rapid development of the industry in Cambridge over the last few decades reinvigorated formerly depressed areas of the city and injected money into the city's economy.

"When Biogen came in in the early 1980s, it was a big wasteland. Now, everyone wants to be in Cambridge. It will always be where everyone wants to be," says Peter Feinstein, administrative director of the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council.

"Look at Kendall Square. It's one of the few places in real estate market that's doing well," President of the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, Marc E. Goldberg '79 says, pointing to the area in the vicinity of MIT where many Cambridge biotech companies are clustered.

The city, in return, has provided the industry with what many representatives of biotech companies call a "stable, regulatory environment."

In the early 1980s, when biotech industries were just beginning to enter Cambridge, the city led the country in instituting ordinances that regulated the use of recombinant DNA technology and animal research.

Cambridge became the first city to adopt as law the Animal Welfare Act as well as guidelines for recombinant DNA research set by the National Institutes of Health.

Cambridge, with long-established laboratories at Harvard and MIT from which biotechnology companies have drawn upon and originated, has profited greatly from the rapidly growing industry.

Thirty-five of the 120 biotech companies that have sprouted up in Massa-chusetts over the past decade are based in Cambridge, making the city an important center for the industry and the industry a significant economic group in the city.

However, as the companies grow in size and seek to manufacture their products in large quantities, many industry analysts say the availability of land and resources will eventually become a key question in determining whether the city can keep its hold on the high-tech industry.

"As companies mature, they will need to make good business decisions. Many are not satisfied by square footage available. It's harder to get open space--that type of problem may drive folks out," says Dale Blank, chair of the biotech subcommittee of the Cambridge Chamber of Commerce.

But most biotech executives say that because most of their research depends upon laboratory work from Harvard and MIT, the city will be safe from any sudden uprooting of companies. "In terms of development expertise, there's a strong base in Cambridge. We intend to keep our labs in Cambridge," says Blank.

"The main advantage is that the employee pool here is unlike any other place in the country. Most biotech companies need ready access to a trained scientific community and Cambridge certainly has that," says Tony Phillips, a local biotech executive.

"Our company has its heart and soul in Cambridge. Many people come out of the MIT environment. We have no immediate plans or distant plans to have the corporate center enaywhere else than Cambridge. Massachusetts," says Mitchell Sayare, the chief executive officer of the locally-based Immunogen Inc.

Feinstein says that Cambridge's main drawback is its location in an economically unstable state. "The only thing that makes Cambridge less attractive is that it's in Massachusetts. That will change as state problems resolve."