2025 Market Facts VRP - Flipbook - Page 86
78 | ECO NO MI C PRO FI L E & MA R K ET FACT S 2025
COURTESY GLENN ASAKAWA / UNIVERSITY OF
COLORADO-BOULDER
Tin Tin Su, a University of Colorado
Boulder professor who serves as chief
science officer for technology-transfer
company SuviCa Inc., works on a drug
to battle head and neck cancer.
BIOSCIENCE
Research funding cuts loom large for
life-sciences sector
The region — and especially the Boulder area — remains one of the
preeminent hotspots for biotechnology and life-sciences research and
commercialization, but the outlook for the sector is growing increasingly
gloomy.
Increases in “pharmaceutical manufacturing enabled notable employment growth in recent years; however, a 1.7% decrease in 2022 marked the
first decline since 2012,” according to CU’s Colorado Business Economic
Outlook report. “This trend continued in 2023 with subsector employment
falling 2.2% over the year.” And that was before President Donald Trump’s
administration began slashing budgets for institutions, schools and labs
engaged in biotech research.
Few industries are as reliant on grant-funded university research as
is bioscience. With much of that money being abruptly yanked away by
the new federal administration, life-sciences executives who gathered this
spring for a BizWest CEO Roundtable in the University of Colorado Boulder’s Jennie Smoly Caruthers Biotechnology Building said the ripple effects
pose many hurdles.
While success stories in the private sector can still be found — Swiss
pharmaceutical manufacturer Corden Pharma International GmbH is
investing nearly $500 million over the next few years to expand its opera-
tions in Boulder in order to produce more GLP-1 peptides and Agilent
Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) is spending even more to build out its oligo
manufacturing facility in Frederick — some of the region’s biotech players
have been forced to cut staff or even shutter operations in recent months.
AGC Biologics laid off 85 workers in Longmont and Boulder last fall and
Fresh Tracks Therapeutics Inc. stopped trading its stock on the over-thecounter market at the end February as the drug company began a potentially lengthy dissolution process.
Still, the region punches above its weight when it comes to life-sciences
operations and jobs.
“Boulder County holds a substantial share of Colorado’s bioscience
jobs, accounting for approximately 20% to 25% of the state’s bioscience
workforce. This concentration is due to the presence of leading research
institutions and biotech companies, and a strong focus on innovation in
life sciences,” the CU report said. “The region’s collaborative environment
and access to talent make it a key player in Colorado’s bioscience sector.
The University of Colorado Boulder is home to the BioFrontiers Institute,
an organization designed to facilitate interdisciplinary research and expand
Colorado’s leadership in biotechnology, and the university attracts major
research funding and generates numerous startups.”
