TQ TAKES: Why The Biotech Industry Can Thrive in Las Vegas

Over the past year, LVGEA has been preparing to expand our business development strategy and activities. Historically we have enjoyed a pipeline filled with leads that connected with us either through the website, a site selector/broker, or the Governor’s Office of Economic Development.  These referrals will continue to be treated with white-glove service from every member of the team.  But as of 2024, we added another strategy to enhance the pipeline: targeted and intentional outbound sales pursuits.  These pursuits will be focused on industries that research shows are good fits for the Las Vegas region, with Biotech being at the top of that list.

Late in 2023, we unveiled industry playbooks for each of our target industries.  The playbooks include a market analysis, the Vegas advantage, target client profile, sales strategy, and calendar of outbound sales and investor engagement opportunities. These playbooks will guide the agency’s ‘spearfishing’ recruitment strategy throughout 2024.

Over the next few months, I’ll be using this space to highlight why we believe each of these industries will provide a winning hand for the Las Vegas region, and the ways in which we’re going after these business leaders.

Let’s start with biotech, a huge global industry, with a total economic impact of about $5 trillion, or nearly 6% of global GDP. In Nevada, we’ve seen a 22% growth in the biotech industry since 2018, which is twice the national growth rate. The state already boasts more than 9,400 jobs across 1,000+ biotech companies in healthcare, therapeutics, genomics, and pharmaceuticals, and we see a huge opportunity for continued growth. 

So, Why Vegas?

Las Vegas has a strong backbone of biotech research through the region’s higher education institutions, including UNLV, an R1 research university, but also Roseman University of Health Sciences, which offers 64,000 square feet of state-of-the-art research and wet labs. And the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health, located within the Las Vegas Medical District, is a renowned research and treatment facility for neurological disorders. In fact, between 2018 – 2023, six Las Vegas organizations received 101 research grants from the National Institutes of Health, totaling $67 million.

The region also has a robust pipeline of medical professionals, with the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine at UNLV graduating its first class of physicians in 2021, Touro University Nevada graduating more than 150 medical professionals each year, and Roseman in the process of accrediting its College of Medicine.  

Southern Nevada’s proximity to established bio hubs San Francisco and San Deigo also mean satellite offices or partner facilities are just a short plane ride or drive away. In Las Vegas, biotech leaders can take advantage of that proximity while still realizing reduced operational expenses, lower land prices, and an affordable cost of living.

Finally, Las Vegas has a burgeoning tech scene, recently being named the best city in America for pre-IPO startups, making it a perfect place for biotech startups to find support and resources. Additionally, venture capital investments in bioscience companies in Nevada increased significantly in 2021, totaling nearly $64M. 

LVGEA’s Biotech Attraction Strategy

LVGEA is targeting small, fairly new biotech companies in the late-clinical or early commercialization stage looking to expand. We expect most of these companies to be located on the coasts, including the Bay Area, LA and San Diego, Boston, or Seattle, as these established biotech hubs are in high tax and highly regulated regions where companies lack the ability to scale.

There are several incubators we’ll be monitoring to identify growing biotech companies, including the SPARK Stanford program, JLABS through Johnson and Johnson, Cedar Sinai Technology Ventures, and Cleveland Clinic Innovations.

We’ll also be partnering with UNLV, the City of Las Vegas, and the Governor’s Office of Economic Development to host a booth at the BIO International 2024 conference, the world’s largest biotech conference, being held in San Diego this June.  Other conferences our team will attend with regional partners include the Health 2.0 Conference USA in Las Vegas and Cantor Global Healthcare Conference in New York. These conferences provide us valuable facetime with biotech business leaders from around the globe to tout the benefits of doing business in Las Vegas. 

Vegas Loves Biotech

While Las Vegas’ biotech ecosystem is currently modest in size, there are already several companies working to grow the industry within the market.  Heligenics, founded in 2017 by a UNLV professor, researches how genetics can help improve medical care.  Vena Vitals, an early-stage medical technology company creating a non-invasive continuous blood pressure monitoring device, is based in Irvine, California, but is in the process of opening a research lab at Roseman University. And Optum Frontier Therapies, a part of Optum, is a rare disease pharmacy that recently opened a Las Vegas facility to better serve their customers.

We believe Las Vegas has all the components to sustain and grow a biotech ecosystem, which is why we’re focusing on finding companies looking to get in at the ground level and help grow the region’s workforce pipeline and supply chain.

LVGEA needs the community’s support to continue to grow the region’s biotech industry. If you know of a biotech company looking to expand or that could be a great fit for Las Vegas, connect with LVGEA’s Business Development Team.