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One way or another, if Arizona is going to realize its potential, we as Arizonans need to come together to figure how we are going to invest in Arizona’s future.
(Republished with permission)
Rapid growth in bioscience industry in peril
By: Megan Janetsky April 22, 2015 , 5:48 pm
From 2002 to 2011, Arizona bioscience sector played a major role in boosting the state’s economic development. Jobs increased by 45 percent, adding more than 30,700 to the market and sweeping the new industry into Arizona like a wave.
This massive 45 percent growth compared to the national average of 12 percent over that period. But now, budget cuts to the state’s universities and other factors are raising concerns that the slowing of the Arizona bioscience industry’s growth may be inevitable, hampering the state’s overall economy.
“We can’t economize our way to growth,” said Joan Koerber-Walker, president and CEO of the Arizona Bioindustry Association. “There has to be a balance between prudent spending and investment. And right now, what we’ve done with the current budget is we’ve focused on prudent spending, but we didn’t leave anything on the table for investment. When you do that, you run the risk of losing opportunities and that’s why industry and philanthropy will need to step up until such time where the state is willing to step up and contribute their share.”
Steve Zylstra, president and CEO of the Arizona Technology Council, noted that technology’s role in Arizona’s economy has spanned decades. Many specific fields within that industry have taken off, chief among them being bioscience, he said. This long-time role of technology in Arizona provided the foundation for the bioscience industry to grow.
“It (the state) has much more of a history in technology than most realize,” he said. “The semiconductor industry which essentially led to the name ‘Silicon Valley’ in California actually started simultaneously in Arizona in the late 40’s and early 50’s. So technology has been a part of Arizona’s economy for a very long time.”
The takeoff of the bioscience industry was triggered in large part by 10-year roadmap established by the Flinn Foundation, an Arizona grant-making foundation with a specific focus in the industry.
In 2001 a group of 100 industry leaders met and set goals for the industry, investment parameters, and general guidelines on how to get Arizona’s bioscience industry to meet their goals.
“It’s been very encouraging in the first decade. Arizona has transformed from being not really on the map to Arizona becoming one of the fastest emerging bioscience states,” said Brad Halvorsen, vice president of communications at the Flinn Foundation.
Flinn and the organizations that helped build the roadmap established a variety of programs in the market.
“During the first 10 years a lot of our goals were based on building our research infrastructure,” Halvorsen said.
The investments have led to the start of work on the $100 million University of Arizona Cancer Center to be established in Phoenix, a major $100 million clinical trial of a drug that could delay or prevent the onset of Alzheimer’s disease, and many other research efforts, investments and businesses.
After the roadmap project ended in 2012, Halvorsen said Flinn Foundation didn’t hesitate to start developing another ten-year plan, updating it in 2014.
“Looking at the progress from the first decade it became straight-forward that it was an excellent program that needs to continue,” Halvorsen said.
However, in their newer plan, which stretches through 2025, they shifted their focus. Instead of working on establishing a foundation for the industry to grow upon, they hope to build up. They plan to take the research they developed in the first ten years and translate it into the marketplace, turning it into programs and firms.
But now the concerns have arisen over future growth in the industry. Gov. Doug Ducey’s budget, which proposed cutting $75 million from university funding, was a primary concern for players in the industry, especially after the state Legislature increased the cuts to $99 million.
“The bioscience community tends to be much more intertangled, intertwined with the universities,” Zylstra said. “That’s where a lot of the clinical trials go on and companies use university faculty as well as resources, facilities, anything in the academic realm to do some of their research. Some of that might be slowed down.”
Koerber-Walker of the Arizona Bioindustry Association said the slowing of the Arizona bioscience industry’s growth may be inevitable.
She explained that she believes the government plays a major role in developing the biosciences just as industry leaders, philanthropy organizations and emerging entrepreneurs do. However, for the industry to continue to prosper everyone involved needs to play their own part. Koerber-Walker said it’s essential for the state government to pull its weight and place education and research as a priority.
“One way or another, if Arizona is going to realize its potential, we as Arizonans need to come together to figure how we are going to invest in Arizona’s future. Until we figure that out, we will start to slow down our growth and we won’t see the same level of rapid growth that we’ve seen in the past ten years,” Koerber-Walker said.
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