Dallas lands coveted U.S. biotech research hub after months of campaigning

Dallas will function one of 3 U.S. hubs for a $2.5 billion federal biotech research company after months of focused campaigning by way of Texas towns, universities and science advocates, cementing North Texas’ position some of the country’s main existence 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 phase of a Biden Administration push to boost up biomedical and well being research. The hub will focal point on buyer enjoy, get admission to and diversifying scientific trials for ARPA-H tasks.

Dallas’ Pegasus Park will function the headquarters’ bodily web site, however the Texas hub will achieve a ways past the sprawling, 26-acre biotech campus. Austin, San Antonio and Houston make up the remaining of the consortium, controlled by way of the company Advanced Technology International. Stakeholders in El Paso and College Station have additionally thrown their reinforce at the back of the statewide workforce.

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

The campus will space undertaking managers in fee of leveraging the variety Texas has to provide, each in demographics and in varieties 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,” mentioned 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 identify for the company’s “hub and spoke” fashion that may come with spoke websites around the nation along with the specialised headquarters. The identify is a nod to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s authentic ARPANET undertaking, a public pc community that in the long run become the web.

“When ARPA-H first began back in 2022, one of the first goals was to catalyze the health ecosystem,” mentioned 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 will also be hospitals, well being methods or universities. The closest spoke web site to Dallas is set four-and-a-half hours north in Tahlequah, Okla., on the Cherokee Nation Health Service.

A web page will open the following day taking programs for added spoke places, mentioned Tom Luce, director of biotech projects at Lyda Hill Philanthropies. The Dallas group, devoted to investment existence sciences discoveries, spearheaded Dallas’ software to host ARPA-H.

Luce mentioned he believes main avid gamers within the Dallas well being care global would make excellent spokes, together with UT Southwestern and Baylor Scott and White Health. He particularly indexed UT Southwestern Medical Center at RedBird, situated south of Downtown Dallas, as a possible spoke web site.

North Texas has lengthy battled to stake its declare within the biotech global, going up in opposition to coastal research giants like Boston, Silicon Valley and North Carolina’s Research Triangle. Anchored by way of main scientific establishments UT Southwestern in Dallas and the University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth, DFW’s existence sciences exertions pool has greater by way of 17%, or 26,000 employees, since 2019, in step 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 mentioned. “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 2d headquarters about 5 years in the past after being named a finalist. The tech behemoth’s HQ2 in the long run 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,” mentioned 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 main Texas town.

Wegrzyn introduced in March that the company would have 3 headquarters, with one preemptively assigned to the Washington, D.C., house that may focal point on partnerships. The actual location of the Capitol house hub has but to be decided.

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

A Houston consortium led by way of the Texas Medical Center additionally vied for the client enjoy hub. Both the Dallas and Houston coalitions had been decided on to host web site visits for the ARPA-H workforce, after which the Houston bid used to be eradicated, Luce mentioned.

“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 mentioned. “But, we certainly welcome them back. They have a lot to offer.”

Lyda Hill Philanthropies performed an important position now not most effective 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 reward in 2015 and, extra not too long ago, her group partnered with Research Bridge Partners to take a position $4 million in serving to researchers on the scientific middle spin their findings into full-fledged corporations.

Hill and J. Small Investments purchased an 18-story tower that after housed Mobil Corp.’s headquarters and surrounding structures in 2015 and became it into Pegasus Park, a mixed-use place of work campus to accommodate existence sciences and nonprofit corporations. In June, Dallas City Council awarded just about $8 million in incentives to Bridge Labs for a $110 million growth on the campus.

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 seek advice from Pegasus Park for themselves.

The Texas bid that in the long run received used to be a statewide effort that required coordination from teams together with the Dallas Regional Chamber and the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas. Luce mentioned he and his workforce had a listing of greater than 600 folks concerned with the appliance to name following Tuesday’s announcement.