As chief financial officer of Drive Capital for four years, Christina Perry played a key role in the Columbus Region’s emergence as a destination for tech investors looking for new opportunities. It was exciting work, but in 2019, a new startup developing potentially lifesaving gene therapies came to Drive and inspired Perry to refocus efforts on one of the Region’s fastest-growing sectors: life sciences.
Forge Biologics, formally founded in 2020, serves as a contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) for nearly 50 clients in various stages of bringing innovative gene therapies to patients. It’s a star player in the Region’s life sciences sector and as CFO, part of Perry’s mission is sharing the area’s benefits with potential clients.
Perry points out to life sciences companies the advantages of starting or growing in Central Ohio compared with the traditional tech and life science hubs. When building a company, cash runway is always a focus, and companies must allocate finite resources to the areas of the business that will most quickly build value and ultimately return on investment.
Forge’s own experience is instructive: It bought a 175,000-square-foot shell of a building in Grove City and was able to expand and outfit it to the precise specifications required for gene therapy manufacturing (for example, a 50-foot ceiling to allow all utilities to be inside the building to ensure reliability) at a cost 30% to 40% less than it would have been on the coasts. This early savings on real estate alone enabled Forge to invest more into people and process, getting operations off the ground faster than others in the industry.
And then there’s the workforce, current and prospective: Columbus cleared a life sciences milestone this year by breaking into the top 25 U.S. regions for life sciences talent, as recognized by the global real estate consulting giant CBRE.[1] The company ranked Columbus 22nd in the absolute number of people working with biology and/or biomedical science degrees, and the pipeline is robust: Looking at new biology and biomedical science degrees as a percentage of the total workforce, Columbus ranks third.
Eddie Pauline, CEO of Ohio Life Sciences (OLS), the statewide industry trade association, credits the combination of foundational central Ohio research institutions — think The Ohio State University (OSU), Battelle, Chemical Abstracts Service, Nationwide Children’s Hospital (NCH) and more — and transformative public/private investment in the Innovation District near OSU with kicking into high gear the Region’s life sciences potential.
“That was the trigger,” Pauline said of the Innovation District investment from JobsOhio, the state’s private economic development company. “That really solidified things for Ohio State and for Nationwide Children’s Hospital, allowing them to hire smart researchers in health and life sciences and invest in more STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) curriculum. It’s already paying dividends.”
Indeed, the Innovation District on OSU’s west campus, sometimes referred to as Carmenton, has 270 acres available for development and has attracted more than $900 million in public and private investment.[2] Among the companies in the district is Andelyn Biosciences, a developer and manufacturer of gene therapies that began as a Nationwide Children’s startup.
NCH and its Abigail Wexner Research Institute (AWRI) are at the center of the Region’s growing life sciences profile. Of the first eight gene therapies approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), two were invented and developed at Nationwide Children’s AWRI,[3] offering new hope for children with Duchenne muscular dystrophy and spinal muscular atrophy.
The first building to open in Carmenton was Ohio State’s Pelotonia Research Center, an interdisciplinary facility designed to foster collaborative innovation and named in honor of the annual bicycle tour that includes more than 6,500 riders each year. To date, the center has raised more than $283 million[4] for cancer research.
As powerful a catalyst as the Innovation District is, however, life sciences companies are thriving all over the Region. Along with Forge in Grove City, there’s Sarepta Therapeutics, a gene therapy R&D company based in the traditional Boston-area life sciences hub that chose central Ohio for its Genetic Therapies Center of Excellence (GTCOE). Based at
Easton, the GTCOE focuses on discovery, pre-clinical and clinical development supporting Sarepta’s pipeline of genetic medicines, including ELEVIDYS, the Duchenne therapy invented at AWRI.
Other recent additions to Central Ohio’s life sciences ecosystem include international biotech leader Amgen, which in February 2024 opened a state-of-the-art biomanufacturing facility at the New Albany International Business Park. The 300,000-square-foot facility went from groundbreaking to FDA approval in just 26 months — the most rapid site completion in Amgen’s nearly 45-year history. At the facility now, Ohioans make medications that improve and prolong life for patients around the world.
When Denver-based STAQ Pharma needed a second location to better serve clients east of the Mississippi, the maker of compound drugs chose a site on Columbus’ west side. CEO Joe Bagan didn’t go into the site search expecting to land in Ohio, but he says the advantages of the Columbus Region quickly became apparent. They started with the proximity of Nationwide Children’s and Cincinnati Children’s hospitals, members of the consortium of hospitals that directs STAQ.
From there, the Region’s well-known, well-oiled machinery for courting economic development took over. Officials from NCH, JobsOhio, One Columbus and the startup studio Rev1 Ventures joined to lead STAQ leaders on a tour of the site, formerly used by Express Scripts. Said Bagan, “I just felt like, there’s a group effort here to help us figure out how to locate. That started moving the needle toward Ohio.”
Not every city or region offered similar support, he said. “In some of those other states it was more like, you get a PowerPoint on what’s great and ‘Here’s some real estate folks to call.’ Definitely not the same amount of handholding, and we needed that — it’s super helpful. The team showed up and the team kept working at it — ‘What does STAQ need and how can we help them?’”
Pauline, of OLS, has seen the dynamic at work many times. “There is definitely a united front of support for prospective new companies,” he said. “Everyone shows up that needs to show up. The ‘Columbus Way’ is real.”
Previous successes mean that life sciences companies new to the Region benefit from a robust ecosystem, both regionally and statewide. That includes a workforce with built-in knowledge, according to Bagan. “We must manufacture according to the toughest standard in the world,” he said, referring to current good manufacturing practice (cGMP), the gold standard for aseptic manufacture of drugs. “If you go to a place where you don’t have those skills, there’s only so much academic teaching work you can do to understand cGMP,” he said. “You have to experience it, and having a robust life sciences community means those skills are available.”
The synergy works for employees as well as employers, Pauline said, “For outside talent who are considering an opportunity to relocate to Columbus, there is a strong ecosystem of many successful biotechs in the Region allowing for additional career growth and professional networking.” Perry of Forge Biologics points out that, of its 350 employees, about 20% relocated for their jobs — an indication that the Region is attractive to talent as well as capital. “NCH is an international leader in pediatric research and innovation in the field,” Perry said. “For a workforce that is typically inspired by making a difference in the world, this keeps awareness of their mission close to home.”
Pauline expects to see the momentum sustained with further investment by individual companies and the industry as well as workforce development initiatives. “Everybody’s talking about specific life sciences curriculum,” he said, and it’s happening at all educational levels. OLS now funds a biotech bootcamp at Columbus State Community College for people who want to pivot from other careers to entry-level biotech manufacturing thanks to a State of Ohio workforce grant. Perry added that Forge helped lead the development of the biotech bootcamp curricula and has already hired several graduates.
In the Innovation District, via a public private partnership, the Pelotonia Research Center will soon house long-needed wet-lab space for companies in early stages of development, and the OSU Center for Software Innovation will help attract more of the tech talent, including AI expertise needed to support gene therapy and other biomedical innovations.
STAQ’s Bagan, who has personally relocated to Upper Arlington, sees a bright future. “Everything that has happened to us over the past four years has been a pleasant surprise,” he said. “We didn’t understand it, but now we do — wow. There is a lot here, and I’ve seen it get nothing but better.”
[1] https://www.cbre.com/insights/books/us-life-sciences-talent-trends-2024 [2] https://www.osu.edu/carmenton/ [3] https://www.nature.com/articles/d42473-023-00145-1[4] https://www.pelotonia.org/ride-weekend
