Biotech investors include Maryland taxpayers. They've invested directly in biotech through the Maryland Venture Fund. They've made millions in stem-cell grants. And they spend millions more financing the Department of Business and Economic Development, which has made biotech a foundation of its strategy to bring jobs to the state.
The idea is for biotech companies to develop blockbuster drugs, hire thousands of technicians and salespeople and, ideally, make the pills here, too.
True, there are successes. MedImmune, Human Genome Sciences and United Therapeutics are important companies. MedImmune just received approval to produce a vaccine against the H1N1 flu virus.
There just aren't enough of them. Most of the state's 400-odd bioscience concerns employed 20 employees or fewer each in 2006, according to a survey by the Tech Council of Maryland. With 23,000 employees, the sector was about the same size as Maryland's laundry and dry-cleaning industry.
The problem, of course, isn't lack of intelligence, foresight, leadership or even capital in Maryland or anywhere else. It's biology. People's insides are far more complex than those of lab rats or silicon crystals. That means bioscience breakthroughs need more time and investment to bear fruit.
"It's definitely a tough time for biotech," says James Hughes, vice president of research and development at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. "Biotech needs big infusions of cash and they need long-term cash, and there's just a whole lot less of that available these days. Another thing is that the whole health care debate may be holding things back."
Investors might be closing their checkbooks until it becomes clear how Congress will act on health care reform, he said.
If so, that's ironic. For all their frequent high cost, pharmaceuticals still deliver the most health for the buck. No matter what Washington does, drugs will have an expanding role in treating aging baby boomers and containing ballooning medical costs.
That's another way of saying biotech companies are more important than dry cleaners. This is one thing Maryland Republicans and Democrats seem to agree on.
Promoting biotech is the right call. We're making the right bets. It would be nice if a few more of them started paying off.
