The Flinn Foundation recently released the latest version of its Bioscience Roadmap for Arizona — a guide to the sector in the state and a list of goals for the next five years and ways to reach them. The first roadmap came out more than two decades ago.
Among the goals outlined in this version: increasing collaboration between different entities; increasing the bioscience workforce; and improving the startup and entrepreneur environments.
Mary O’Reilly is vice president of Bioscience Research Programs at the Flinn Foundation. She joined The Show to talk more about this.
Full conversation
MARK BRODIE: Mary, why is it so important to have a roadmap and specific goals in this particular sector?
MARY O’REILLY: Yeah, well, it’s an important sector in general. So the biosciences, I think people might better understand it generally as the life sciences. So what are the areas that are important to us? Maintaining health and wellness in the longer term. So we’re talking about cures for Alzheimer’s. We’re talking about like the spectacles we’re wearing, how do we develop those? How do we sort of help children with autism?
You know, these are all of the challenges that the bio and life sciences are addressing, in addition to other areas like in agriculture, we need heat resistant crops, etc. So these are the types of problems we’re solving. And the reason why it’s important to Arizona is we have a lot of assets here.
We need to diversify and have a diversified population. So why would we not use the assets which we have, i.e. great universities, great institutions, a very strong agriculture section. Why would we not use that for the benefit of the population at large?
BRODIE: Are there particular areas of bioscience where Arizona has done well over the last decade or more?
MARY O’REILLY: Yeah. So at this point in time, we have about 140,000 people involved are engaged in the bioscience — 100,000 of those would actually be in the hospital system, and 40,000 are in the companies spread across the state.
So you have W.L. Gore up in Flagstaff, you have the likes of Medtronic and Stryker and many others. Dexcom are all here in the Valley. And then as you move south, you have organizations like Ventana [Medical Systems].
So it really is the building up of companies like that. And we can do it either by bringing in new large companies or by growing some of our own.
BRODIE: Is one of those preferable to the other?
MARY O’REILLY: I would say at this point we’re still in the growth phase. So I think time will tell which one might be the stronger. At this point in time, certainly medical devices is stronger than, let’s say, our pharmaceutical sector. But there’s opportunities in other sectors, but perhaps they’re still in their infancy at this point.
BRODIE: All right, so where are some of those opportunities? What are some areas maybe where Arizona hasn’t been as robust or as successful as advocates would like?
MARY O’REILLY: Yeah, the areas like gene and cell therapy is an area of increasing sort of interest broadly. And if you look at UA and has talked about investing in that space building, the new CAMI (Center for Advanced Molecular and Immunological Therapies) building downtown Phoenix, that’s an area of growth and where we have an opportunity maybe to leapfrog other areas as a potential area of high strength, the areas of neurology and neuroscience.
We have real strengths at Barrow Neurological Institute that we can capitalize on. I mean, when you think that the first Neuralink, the first device chip was placed into somebody’s brain, and that was done here in Phoenix. So these are strengths.
BRODIE: Let me ask you about funding for some of these projects, because obviously NIH grants are in some ways in question. Other federal research dollars are very much in question. So let me ask first off, what does uncertainty do for both the institutions that are doing this research and for the research itself?
MARY O’REILLY: … There are two aspects to uncertainty. One, it can actually breed innovation, but also a level of certainty. There has to be a level of certainty. So the hope is that after this period of disruption, that we can get back to having some long sight into what the future is going to hold.
Whatever is happening here in Arizona, whatever is happening in the state. I mean, I think everybody has to remember we’re competing on a global scale. So if we’re not focused on that, if we don’t put everything in place to be able to do that, then as a state in the country, we’re putting ourselves at a disadvantage.
BRODIE: Are there other pots of money available? Like, is this something that philanthropy would play a role in? Other than, for example, federal grants, are there other places to look for research dollars?
MARY O’REILLY: Yeah, well, philanthropy will never be able to fill the gap. The NIH is the largest private funder of research in the world. Industry obviously spends an awful lot more money, actually considerably more than the NIH or other federal organizations on research. But their research tends to be at a later stage, so they tend to be more on the development and translation, the development of a product.
BRODIE: More actionable type stuff, right, as opposed to the initial research?
MARY O’REILLY: Yeah. So again, as these challenges arise, a lot of dialogue is occurring to see who’s going to be filling certain gaps.
BRODIE: So you have put forward a roadmap here. I’m curious, when you look 10, 15 years down the road at the bioscience sector in Arizona, what do you see?
MARY O’REILLY: Yeah, well, what I would see is hopefully we have — if today, and again it’s an estimate — but if we have 10 really strong companies, so it would absolutely, in a state where we have over 7 million people, we need two hands to count them on, not just one. Yeah, so we definitely need larger companies.
We need to have a larger workforce. You know, these are high paying jobs. They pay over $25,000 over an average wage with very good career pathways. So there’s high value to having these in the economy. So that would be the goal is: Can we create jobs? Can we give people an opportunity to build really strong careers for themselves?
And we have a young population coming up that need to have access to good jobs. And this is one way.
BRODIE: Is it realistic, do you think, for Phoenix or for Arizona at some point to be sort of competitors with a place like Boston, which has been doing this kind of work for so long, or Austin, Texas, or San Diego, places that really have very well established, longstanding bioscience sectors? Could the Valley or Arizona as a state be in that conversation?
MARY O’REILLY: I think we certainly have the opportunity to be in the conversation in specific areas. I mean, what we have to remember is we’re talking about a roadmap that was first devised just over 20 years ago. And you’re looking at areas that have been in this space for well over 100 years. So we’re not going to catch up, basically.
They have strengths, they’re going to continue have strengths. But we will catch up, and we will leap forward in very specific areas. So we have opportunities like in the use of AI in the development of new therapies — gene and cell therapy, as I mentioned; medical devices, smart devices. We’re going to be using medical devices that are talking to us and telling us when we should go and see the dentist and things like that.
So there’s lots of opportunities to specialize, and we’re going to do that. I don’t think — we have no capacity to be a Boston, and I don’t think the public actually, we don’t want to be a Boston. We have different assets. And one of the real strengths actually — and a really nice thing that’s beginning to come to the fore — is the semiconductor industry and this intersection of medical devices and semiconductors.
We’re very unique in that. I think Ireland does have some of those assets too. And maybe in Israel, but here we are sitting in Arizona with some of the biggest or strongest semiconductor assets. And at the same time, we have a medical device industry. And those two are absolutely — every pacemaker has chips. So this is an area we can really be strong.
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