Dallas lands coveted federal biotech research hub after months of campaigning

A $2.5 billion federal biotech research company will name Dallas house after months of focused campaigning by means of Texas towns, universities and science advocates, cementing North Texas’ position a number of the country’s primary lifestyles sciences hubs.

The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, referred to as ARPA-H, introduced the verdict on Tuesday to determine one of its 3 headquarters within the Lone Star State as section of a Biden Administration push to boost up biomedical and well being research. The hub will focal point on buyer revel in, get admission to and diversifying medical trials for ARPA-H initiatives.

Dallas’ Pegasus Park will function the headquarters’ bodily web page, however the Texas hub will achieve some distance past the sprawling, 26-acre biotech campus. Austin, San Antonio and Houston make up the remainder of the consortium, controlled by means of the company Advanced Technology International. Stakeholders in El Paso and College Station have additionally thrown their give a boost to in the back of the statewide group.

Pegasus Park sits throughout Stemmons Freeway from the Dallas’ expansive Medical District. It’s about 5 miles from downtown and provides simple get admission to to each primary North Texas airports.

The campus will space challenge managers in rate of leveraging the range Texas has to provide, each in demographics and in sorts of research.

“One of the things that the Dallas group was really able to show was that they were able to bring communities from all over the state and the country together,” stated Craig Gravitz, director of ARPA-H’s Project Accelerator Transition Innovation Office. “And we saw firsthand that it wasn’t just these big cities, but small communities as well, and that was such an important signal for us that the group that was in front of us really had that convening power that we were looking for.”

Tuesday’s announcement additionally introduced ARPANET-H, the brand new title for the company’s “hub and spoke” type that can come with spoke websites around the nation along with the specialised headquarters. The title is a nod to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s authentic ARPANET challenge, a public laptop community that in the end changed into the web.

“When ARPA-H first began back in 2022, one of the first goals was to catalyze the health ecosystem,” stated ARPA-H Director Renee Wegrzyn. “We can’t do that without people from every segment of the American health ecosystem, and we can’t do that without people from every walk of life in America and people involved in transitioning those health solutions.”

The preliminary listing of spoke websites span the rustic, with places in California, Alabama, Alaska and Wisconsin, amongst others. Becoming a spoke prices not anything to those companions, which may also be hospitals, well being techniques or universities. The closest spoke web page to Dallas is ready four-and-a-half hours north in Tahlequah, Okla., on the Cherokee Nation Health Service.

A web site will open the next day to come taking programs for extra spoke places, stated Tom Luce, director of biotech projects at Lyda Hill Philanthropies. The Dallas group, devoted to investment lifestyles sciences discoveries, spearheaded Dallas’ software to host ARPA-H.

Luce stated he believes primary gamers within the Dallas well being care global would make just right spokes, together with UT Southwestern and Baylor Scott White Health. He particularly indexed UT Southwestern Medical Center at RedBird, positioned south of Downtown Dallas, as a possible spoke web page.

North Texas has lengthy battled to stake its declare within the biotech global, going up towards coastal research giants like Boston, Silicon Valley and North Carolina’s Research Triangle. Anchored by means of primary clinical establishments UT Southwestern in Dallas and the University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth, DFW’s lifestyles sciences exertions pool has higher by means of 17%, or 26,000 staff, since 2019, in keeping with research by real estate firm CBRE.

“We wanted to make a statement, which Lyda Hill has been working toward for 10 years or more, to really say that North Texas can and should be at bio-life sciences hub for the country,” Luce stated. “And in our mind, having ARPA-H is a statement that Texas is really now a bio-life sciences third coast alternative.”

Landing ARPA-H’s new house is a significant win for Dallas, which misplaced a bid for Amazon’s 2nd headquarters about 5 years in the past after being named a finalist. The tech behemoth’s HQ2 in the end went to Arlington, Va.

“North Texas is home to the best and brightest researchers and innovators, and Dallas being chosen as the site of the ARPA-H customer experience hub shows we can still do big things when we work together as Texans,” stated U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, D-Dallas. “Today’s announcement further solidifies our region as a national leader in health care research and groundbreaking new treatments. This hub will also bring great jobs and supercharge economic development in an area where we are already growing.”

Architects of the bid for ARPA-H in the beginning submitted an open-ended software detailing the original advantages of every primary Texas town.

Wegrzyn introduced in March that the company would have 3 headquarters, with one preemptively assigned to the Washington, D.C., space that can focal point on partnerships. The precise location of the Capitol space hub has but to be made up our minds.

Another hub, which might be positioned in Cambridge, Mass., will function an “investor catalyst” devoted to bringing discoveries to marketplace.

A Houston consortium led by means of the Texas Medical Center additionally vied for the buyer revel in hub. Both the Dallas and Houston coalitions have been decided on to host web page visits for the ARPA-H group, after which the Houston bid used to be eradicated, Luce stated.

“It was disappointing. We wish they had not decided to. We wanted from the beginning for it to be a Texas bid, but Houston decided they were better off to go by themselves,” Luce stated. “But, we certainly welcome them back. They have a lot offer.”

Lyda Hill Philanthropies performed a vital position no longer simplest in forming the Dallas, Austin and San Antonio bid, however in organising North Texas as an incubator for biotech research.

The company’s namesake established UT Southwestern’s Department of Bioinformatics with a $25 million present in 2015 and, extra not too long ago, her group partnered with Research Bridge Partners to speculate $4 million in serving to researchers on the clinical heart spin their findings into full-fledged firms.

North Texas politicos additionally were given in at the software motion, with a number of lawmakers around the ideological spectrum penning a letter inviting Wegrzyn and Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra to consult with Pegasus Park for themselves.

The Texas bid that in the end gained used to be a statewide effort that required the coordination of college techniques, towns and hospitals. Luce stated he and his group had an inventory of greater than 600 folks concerned with the appliance to name following the announcement.