New biotech $49 million hub could generate thousands of jobs, provide mobile cancer screening

More details have been revealed about a new biohealth technology hub that is projected to generate around 141,000 jobs over 10 years — with most of those positions likely to be in supply-chain and service industries, even restaurants, that benefit from economic growth.

Eighteen public and private entities, including Medical College of Wisconsin and Milwaukee Area Technical College, are slated to share $49 million in federal funding for the biohealth hub centered on personalized medicine, an emerging form of health care based on an individual's unique genetic makeup.

The funding, announced earlier this month from the U.S. Department of Commerce, aims to encourage and support research, manufacturing and jobs. Altogether, $504 million was awarded for a dozen “Tech Hubs” spanning 14 states.

Wisconsin, Indiana and New Hampshire will focus on biosciences and medicine. Other states will pursue clean energy, microchip manufacturing, and climate-change resistant infrastructure.

The tech-hub designation recognizes decades of work and accomplishment in Wisconsin's biosciences, said Lisa Johnson, chief executive officer of BioForward Wisconsin, a Madison-based organization founded in 1987 as the Wisconsin Biotechnology Association.

“We’ve had great research institutions. We’ve had great private industry entrepreneurs. But still, we weren’t recognized. … We aren’t San Francisco, San Diego, or Boston,” Johnson said.

Workforce development a key part of Wisconsin's biotech hub plan

Much of the funding is aimed at workforce development in Milwaukee and Dane counties where there is the highest concentration of health science companies and institutions in the state.

“Jobs, jobs, and more jobs. That is what the Tech Hub will mean for Wisconsin,” U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin said Monday during a tour of Milwaukee Area Technical College.

“Whether it is in a high-tech lab, behind a computer, or on a foundry floor, our Tech Hub is going to create all sorts of opportunities for Wisconsinites in a growing field,” she said.

Over the first 10 years, the hub is projected to create 30,062 jobs in personalized medicine, including 11,673 in targeted radiation therapy and 12,792 in genomic medicine, an emerging field of medicine which, among other things, can predict whether someone is ikely to develop an inherited condition later in life even if they don't yet have symptoms.

The job projections were derived from an analysis by a New York firm, America Achieves, which looked at industry data and anticipated compound annual growth rates over the next 10 years. That information was submitted in Wisconsin's grant application for the federal funding.

“We concentrated in the areas we were very focused on,” Johnson said.

However, 111,200 of the 141,262 jobs projected to stem from the technology hub, nearly 79%, would be indirect jobs. Those could be nearly anything, such as work in supply-chain and service industries, construction, even hotels and restaurants that benefit from the economic impact of bioscience companies and institutions.

For every biohealth job, 1.5 additional jobs are created, according to a 2022 BioForward report.

“The total state economic impact contribution by the biohealth industry is $32 billion in direct, indirect, and induced sources," the report notes.

Exact Sciences, Promega help drive Madison area economic growth

Madison, by example, has seen strong economic growth from companies and organizations such as Exact Sciences, Promega, Illumina, Accuray, and University Research Park.

“This industry has always been extremely high on its multiplier effect,” Johnson said.

But if the industry already employs around 52,000 people in the state, has seen double-digit job growth, and has some of the state's largest companies and public institutions, some question whether it needed the $49 million in federal funding.

"What is the need for more taxpayer money, especially as the sum is dwarfed by existing levels of investment," said Patrick McIlheran, policy director of the Badger Institute, a conservative policy think tank based in Milwaukee.

Moreover, "it's hard to evaluate the backer's promises without some good evidence to support them or to show that this isn't just counting growth or investment that would happen in Wisconsin anyhow," McIlheran said.

"Since four out of five of the promised jobs are 'indirect,' it's worth remembering that their 10-year figure for new jobs is about the same as the job growth that Wisconsin saw anyhow in the five years leading up to the pandemic," he added.

Milwaukee could benefit from cancer screening, job training

Medical College of Wisconsin, based in Milwaukee, plans to use some of the money to create a fleet of mobile cancer-screening units in underserved communities in the state.

How much the college will receive is still unknown, but the plan is to address healthcare disparities in low-income Milwaukee neighborhoods and other places where people don’t seek adequate medical care.

The initial screening will be for lung, colon, breast, prostate and liver cancers. Workers will go door-to-door to let people know about the program.

“We are intending to be in communities in the summer of 2025,” said Mara Lord, senior vice president of university engagement and strategic planning at Medical College of Wisconsin.

The services, using technology from GE Health Care, will include mammography, ultrasound, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in a fleet of vehicles. The goal is to create a CARE Scan model which could be implemented nationwide.

In Milwaukee alone, there are thousands of people not in the healthcare system who aren’t likely to receive cancer screening and treatment. “We need to go out and engage with them,” Lord said.

Cancer screening would be used to build a tech hub database

The screenings will collect data from diverse populations, which will assist researchers and entrepreneurs in the biosciences and contribute to a privacy-compliant database that's part of the technology hub.

“The big opportunity is that we can demonstrate and actually move the needle on personalized medicine in a way others cannot,” Lord said.

Milwaukee Area Technical College says it could soon expand its biohealth job training program from the federal funding. How much money the college will receive is still unknown, but it could be used for training laboratory technicians and specialists in radiology and the manufacturing of medical devices.

The college will collaborate with businesses to assess their needs, said Sheldon Garrison, a part-time MATC instructor and biotech expert who specializes in genetics and personalized medicine at Rogers Behavioral Health, a provider of mental health services.

Wages in the biohealth field average $96,000 a year, according to Bioforward, and all of the targeted career paths offer higher than median wages.

More than half the jobs, such as lab technician positions, will not require a bachelor’s degree. Machine operators in medical-device manufacturing are another example.

“They are the unsung heroes of biohealth and precision medicine. These are the folks that are building the parts that go into state-of-the-art medical devices and diagnostics tools our healthcare givers will use,” Garrison said.

Milwaukee’s WRTP Big Step, a nonprofit dedicated to connecting people with family-sustaining jobs, will also offer training, said President and CEO Lindsay Blumer.

Some of it could be focused on apprenticeships. “Those are positions we feel are very relevant,” Blumer said.

There will be opportunities for young people, such as technology boot camps and short-term training that leads directly to employment.

“We’re really focused on youth and adults who may not have even thought of these as potential careers. There’s a generational opportunity to start now and stay in this sector until retirement,” Blumer said.

Indiana has similar goals but more modest job projections

Indiana’s Heartland BioWorks Tech Hub was awarded a $51 million grant, similar to Wisconsin’s, for areas such as worker training and partnering bioscience entrepreneurs with manufacturers.

Indiana is home to Eli Lilly, one of the nation's largest drug makers.

The Covid-19 pandemic was a tipping point for the power of biotechnology to solve emerging problems, yet it exposed the national security risk of America’s reliance on overseas pharmaceutical manufacturing, according to the Applied Research Institute which will oversee Heartland BioWorks.

In the first three months of this year, nationwide there were 323 active drug shortages, surpassing the previous record of 320 in 2014, according to the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists.

Around 73% of all FDA-registered plants making active pharmaceutical ingredients were outside the United States as of a 2021 report from the White House. Active pharmaceutical ingredients are the essence of a medication; for example, acetaminophen is the active ingredient in Tylenol.

“We have seen the importance of having domestic production of the most critically important biotechnology supply chains,” said Andrew Kossack, executive vice president of partnerships at the Applied Research Institute, based in Bloomington.

Nearly all antibiotics come from China.

“When it comes to reshoring technologies, there’s nothing more important, in my opinion, than biosciences. It’s literally a life-and-death technology area,” Kossack said.

BioWorks is projected to create more than 9,000 jobs over 10 years, not including indirect positions like those Wisconsin noted in its numbers.

There’s an expected gap of at least 2,200 biomanufacturing workers per year in Indiana, underscoring the need for additional training. A former General Motors plant in Indianapolis will be turned into a biosciences research facility with classrooms and space for startup companies.

By 2029, BioWorks says, it expects to provide skills training for at least 1,000 people per year.

“We’re eager to look for opportunities to partner with the Wisconsin hub. I think it’s important for those of us in the Midwest to work together,” Kossack said.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wisconsin's biotech hub could fuel jobs and cancer screening