State policymakers hear how bioscience is generating jobs with health innovation

The growing Bioscience industry holds great potential to improve the region’s economy and health , according to speakers at “Bioscience Initiatives: Improving Health and Growing the Economy” at this week’s CSG-ERC Annual Meeting in CT. Panelists included Mostafa Analoui, PhD, Executive Director, UConn Venture Development, Mike Hyde, Vice President, External Affairs, The Jackson Laboratory, and Jon Soderstrom, Ph.D., Managing Director of the Office of Cooperative Research, Yale University. The Northeast has a unique bio-medical ecosystem with considerable capacity to spawn innovative new bioscience companies and to meet those companies’ need for talented workers. Bioscience has attracted hundreds of millions of dollars in private equity and venture capital funding to CT alone. New companies are driving research, developing new drugs and treatments, and leading cutting edge fields such as genomic medicine. UConn has created a Technology Incubation Program supporting dozens of new bioscience ventures across industries. The 88-year old nonprofit scientific research institute, Jackson Labs, has brought 320 well-paying jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars to their new CT site. Yale has created 40 new biotech companies in the Greater New Haven area and more are forming.