This story is a component of CNBC’s quarterly Cities of Success series, which explores cities which have transformed into business hubs with an entrepreneurial spirit that has attracted capital, corporations and employees.
The Denver-Boulder region is rapidly emerging as a serious hub for the life sciences industry, attracting corporations that develop cutting-edge medical treatments and technologies.
Life sciences research goals to know living things, from cells to our planet, to enhance health, food and the environment. The funding growth is being fueled by a mix of things: a surge in enterprise capital and government funding, a collaborative research environment and a booming marketplace for lab space.
BioMed Realty CEO Tim Schoen gives CNBC a tour inside a construction site slated for conversion into state-of-the-art lab space.
CNBC
San Diego-based BioMed Realty, a serious real estate player (acquired by Blackstone in 2016 for $8 billion), made headlines in 2022 with a record-breaking $625 million purchase of Flatiron Park, an enormous complex in Boulder, Colorado. The 1 million square feet across 23 buildings is being converted into lab and tech space to fulfill the region’s surging demand.
“This was a logical next step … to speculate in Boulder and scale,” said Tim Schoen, BioMed Realty’s president and CEO. “Boulder has all the weather you wish in an innovation ecosystem — research universities, scientists, enterprise capital, after which ourselves who provide the mission-critical infrastructure.”
Along with Boulder, the firm operates in five other core life science and tech markets including San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, the Boston and Cambridge area in Massachusetts, and Cambridge, U.K.
Enveda Biosciences, a biotechnology company, occupies lab space in Boulder.
CNBC
In response to business real estate group CBRE, 14 corporations were looking for a cumulative 506,000 square feet of lab space across the Denver-Boulder market in 2023, which incorporates the neighboring city of Aurora. As well as, the Denver-Boulder market saw 370,000 square feet of lab space accomplished and move-in ready with one other 560,000 square feet under construction or renovation.
“I’d describe Boulder as unique and explosive. Unique from the standpoint of its setting on the foothills of the Rocky Mountains,” said Schoen, “after which explosive by way of how the ecosystem has really grown and expanded over the past decade.”
Funding on the rise
Investors are taking notice.
“Investors from Colorado in addition to across the coasts are seeing opportunities here,” said Elyse Blazevich, president and CEO of the Colorado Bioscience Association. “Our ecosystem has raised in excess of a billion dollars for the past seven consecutive years — and early stage funding in Colorado in 2023 grew faster than other life sciences markets across the country.”
Founded in 2003, the Bioscience Association supports the expansion of life sciences, with a concentrate on access to capital, education, networking and more.
In response to Blazevich, funding for pre-seed ventures, series A and series B rounds increased from 2022 to 2023. The largest increase was seen in series A and series B funding, which grew by $53 million, or 28%, 12 months over 12 months. Pre-seed funding, the earliest stage of enterprise capital, grew by $18 million, surging 163%, over that point period.
A recent CBRE report found Denver-Boulder to be the highest U.S. life sciences real estate market, fueled by record investment from enterprise capitalists and the National Institutes of Health.
The report also found the pool of qualified employees in life sciences is growing much faster within the region than the national average, growing 35% over the past five years, in comparison with 16% growth for the U.S. overall.
Entrepreneurial success
The recent surge in enterprise capital flowing into Denver-Boulder builds on the world’s proven track record of success over the past several a long time.
In 1998, entrepreneur Kevin Koch co-founded biotech company Array BioPharma in Boulder. The corporate was acquired by Pfizer for $10.64 billion in 2019, and now Koch is co-founder and CEO of clinical-stage startup Edgewise Therapeutics.
Edgewise develops therapies for rare muscle disorders and generated net proceeds of $186.1 million in its initial public offering in March 2021.
But the corporate began small.
“We were in an incubator throughout the University of Colorado. And we brought in talented folks from the University of Colorado,” Koch told CNBC. “We had interns are available in, who ultimately became employees.”
A scientist at work at Edgewise Therapeutics in Boulder, Colorado, focused on developing therapies for rare muscle disorders.
CNBC
Today, Edgewise has a much larger space in Boulder: 28,000 square feet in total, with half of its 93 employees working in the town office. The corporate plans to expand its footprint and to rent more employees in the approaching years.
Koch said the Boulder region’s history of research into DNA and RNA within the Nineteen Eighties was key to unlocking protein-based medicines to battle disease, which helped to draw capital to the life science hub.
“[That research] nucleated investment within the Boulder area,” he said. “Now, those corporations that commercialized those products, they reinvested in Boulder.”
With the assistance of top enterprise firms, Edgewise Therapeutics has raised greater than half a billion dollars — $550 million in money runway through 2027.
“We decided that Boulder really was the proper place. And I feel it seems that that was the case. We have been in a position to attract lots of unbelievable talent,” Koch said.
Research powerhouse
Denver-Boulder’s innovation ecosystem is churning out ideas, fast.
Aurora, Denver’s biggest suburb, is the epicenter of life sciences research: a 256-acre complex that is home to the University of Colorado’s Anschutz Medical Campus, which receives $700 million in annual grant funding.
Dan LaBarbera is professor of pharmaceutical sciences and founding director of the medical campus’s Center for Drug Discovery.
“Our goal here on the Center for Drug Discovery is to operate as a bridge to maneuver innovation from academia, to industry, after which to the clinic,” LaBarbera told CNBC.
A glimpse contained in the Center for Drug Discovery at CU Anschutz Medical Campus, led by Dr. Dan LaBarbera (right), with the aim of accelerating the method from drug discovery to delivery for patients.
CNBC
Founded in 2021, the middle develops drugs for a big selection of diseases from cancer to Alzheimer’s — using state-of-the-art technology including robots and 3D bioprinters.
“I feel people usually are accustomed to 3D printers, of their ability to print plastics, and even metals,” LaBarbera said. “We’re using very similar technologies to print complex tissues that mimic features of human disease.”
Historically, it took roughly 10 to fifteen years for a drug to maneuver from discovery phase to approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
“Now we are able to expedite that with this technology to make that process roughly six to eight years,” LaBarbera said.
The middle helps shorten the timeline from drug discovery to treatment, aiding startups and existing corporations to get breakthrough medications to patients faster.
“Our goal just isn’t to compete with the pharmaceutical industry,” said LaBarbera. “Our goal is definitely to work with them to develop really modern potential drug therapies.”
TUNE IN: The “Cities of Success” special featuring Denver & Boulder will air on CNBC on April 11 at 10 p.m. ET.