Massachusetts
Alexandria Founder Talks Takeda, Massachusetts, NYC, and 30th Anniversary
Alexandria Real Estate Equities (ARE) executive chairman & founder Joel S. Marcus, joined by Whitney Snider, MD, vice president of science and technology for Alexandria Venture Investments, the venture capital arm of ARE, recently sat down with GEN Edge for an exclusive interview. The pair discussed the transformative impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on biopharma and on Alexandria in Part I.
In Part II of this interview, Marcus discusses Takeda Pharmaceutical’s recent decision to renew its lease and expand its space in Cambridge, MA; his perspective on Massachusetts’ proposed $1 billion extension of the Commonwealth’s bonding authority and tax credits to support life sciences industry growth; and Alexandria’s perspective on where biopharma will grow in New York City given its recent sell-off of a property in Long Island City, Queens.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
GEN Edge: Alexandria recently announced an early renewal and expansion lease agreement with Takeda Pharma in Cambridge, MA. Why was Takeda pursuing an early renewal? And how did Alexandria help keep the company in Kendall Square?
Joel Marcus: Takeda is one of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies in the world, based in Osaka, Japan. Japanese companies have long-term thinking. They have made a decision, both in the past and now, to keep Cambridge as their worldwide R&D center outside of their home in Osaka.
As part of that plan, they came to us six years early and asked us, would we be amenable to tying down their current space in the Alexandria campus at Kendall Square, about 225,000 square feet, for a decade beyond the end of the current term, which takes it through 2040. This is unusual in a sense, but this is a Japanese pharma company wanting to ensure they’re in the world’s number one market for collaboration, certainly for recruitment and retention of the best scientists, and life science workforce, in the world. That was their strategic decision. And then they felt this building was particularly suited. They inherited this building through the acquisition of Ariad Pharmaceuticals and their oncology portfolio [in 2017 for $5.2 billion].
At the end of this lease—it was a 15-year lease that started in 2015—we re-set the rent at a higher rent than the natural ending rent in 2030. It’s then escalated for the next decade, and we end up with a very strong leasing stat as a consequence. And they get, essentially, the right to stay in their home through the year 2040. So, it’s a pretty big decision by them, and a wonderful outcome for us.
GEN Edge: Speaking of the leading market in Cambridge, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey (D) came out earlier this month with a proposed renewal of the Commonwealth’s life science initiative—an additional $1 billion in bonding and tax credits. How effective is that going to be in light of the two other such programs going back to 2008?
Marcus: I think anything is helpful. In all the markets, though, where the money really is needed—[I’m] in New York right now, and this is a great example—city and state money is better spent not so much on infrastructure tax credits, because private industry will bring the infrastructure. And remember, at the early stage, tax credits don’t do any good because you don’t have taxable profits.
The better use of city and state and other supportive money is to go into the founding and funding of early-stage companies so they can grow, hire a workforce, set up a base, and scale. So that’s always my criticism of governmental policy. It should be much more focused on supporting the companies. Tax credits just aren’t relevant for small companies, and infrastructure really isn’t needed, because the private sector is there to provide that.
GEN Edge: In Long Island City, Queens, Alexandria sold one of its properties (30-15 48th Avenue) to an entity of Cine Magic. Alexandria still owns a second property in Long Island City (30-02 48th Avenue). Why sell off one property? Is Alexandria rethinking the prospects of biotech in Long Island City?
Marcus: We were very hopeful when we bought our current site. And then the site we sold to Cine Magic. We were hopeful that Long Island City would turn out to be just a real boom opportunity. We bought those sites in the days just before Amazon announced they were going to Long Island City. Now we didn’t have any inside information, but our timing turned out to be really good.
But then, some of the political people in Long Island City, and some of the leadership who have been pretty negative on business expansion, killed the Amazon opportunity. Then you combine that with COVID-19, and it put Long Island City into a major economic reversal. We just haven’t seen the demand that we were hoping for, and that’s why we decided to recycle the capital in that one building. We still have one building that we’re in the process of tenanting. It has been very slow and painful, but we’re going to see it through.
GEN Edge: Does the West Side of Manhattan, as some developers believe—or the East Side, where Alexandria has its Alexandria Center® for Life Science campus—seem more appealing in terms of New York City biotech activity?
Marcus: I think the East Side Medical Corridor, where we have the first and only commercial life science campus, is still the heart of the ecosystem. There are a number of buildings around, but no real campus. The challenge in New York has been, during and post-COVID-19, is, one, continuing high state and city taxes. That has been a challenge for people to scale in the city. It isn’t a lack of infrastructure.
What’s really missing here, although we’ve made a huge dent—we’re the largest investor in New York biotech companies—there still has not been the kind of venture capital effort at the early stage here. It’s come a long way over the last decade, but it still pales in comparison to the Bay area, San Diego, or Boston, and that’s probably the most needed. If I was to say to the city, to the state, what’s most needed in New York, it would be risk capital for early-stage companies.
GEN Edge: Alexandria Real Estate Equities recently celebrated its 30th anniversary and its 25th as a publicly traded real estate investment trust. How is Alexandria looking to move forward in life sciences? And how will AI help shape that?
Marcus: I think if you ask people who are medical doctors and scientists by training, they’d say we’re still in the early days of innovation. The new advances—AI is just one example—the new modalities, whether it be cell therapy, gene therapy, the whole revolution in mRNA, and many other blockbuster technologies that are starting to emerge, give the industry great hopes for continued innovation.
The other side of that is, we need to be wary of political games that are being played by some in Washington. Sometimes it’s on the left, sometimes it’s on the right. This effort to try to get Medicare to fix drug prices for Medicare patients [the Inflation Reduction Act, criticized by industry leaders since its enactment in 2022 by President Joe Biden], I think at the end of the day will mean that there’ll be less innovative and novel drugs that are addressing the Medicare patient market.
We need to not fix prices or try to control prices. What we need to do, if you want to really impact pricing is, let the manufacturer deal directly with the end user and cut out the middleman right now. The middleman in the pharmaceutical industry is mostly PBMs [pharmacy benefit managers] and other entities that are taking 40–60% of the price of drugs. Imagine if we could eliminate that. You wouldn’t have to create a negative environment for drug discovery. So that’s what we’re hoping for.
GEN Edge: This is an election year. How much are PBMs and other issues affecting biopharma long-term concerns that will have to await the outcome of the election?
Marcus: The good news is there’s likely to be a split. The Republicans are likely to take the Senate. The Democrats are likely to recapture the House. Split government is usually the best government, because it’s balanced. That’s what we’re hoping for.
But what we need is people in Congress—it doesn’t matter what party—who are willing and committed to protect the innovation of this nation in the biomedical industry, which is the foremost industry in the world here, and not play around with governmental interference and go after the middlemen who are sapping the profits, the savings to the end user patient, and the ability to get a fair return on long term investment by the drug manufacturers and discoverers.
Police shot and killed a man who officials say rushed officers with a knife during a call in Lexington, Massachusetts, on Saturday.
Middlesex County District Attorney Marian Ryan said the situation started around 1:40 p.m. when Lexington police received a 911 call from a resident of Mason Street reporting that his son had injured himself with a knife.
Officers from the Lexington Police Department and officers from the Northeastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council (NEMLEC), who were already in town for Patriots’ Day events, responded to the call.
Police were able to escort two other residents out of the home, initially leaving a 26-year-old man inside. According to Ryan, while officers were setting up outside, the man ran out of the home and approached officers with a large kitchen knife.
She added that police tried twice to use non-lethal force, but it was not effective in stopping him. The man was shot by a Wilmington police officer who is a member of NEMLEC. The man was pronounced dead on scene and the officer who fired that shot was taken to a local hospital as a precaution.
The man’s name has not been released.
Ryan said typically in a call like this where someone was described as harming themselves, officers would first try to separate anyone else to keep them out of danger, which was done, and then standard practice would be to try to wait outside.
“It would be their practice to just wait for the person to come out. In the terrible circumstances of today, he suddenly rushed the officers, still clutching the knife,” Ryan said.
The investigation is still in the preliminary stages and more information is expected in time. Ryan said her office will request a formal inquest from the court to review whether any criminal conduct has occurred, which is the standard process.
This happened around the same time as the annual Patriots’ Day Parade, and just hours after a reenactment of the Battle of Lexington, which drew large crowds to town.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
Massachusetts
‘An impossible choice’: With little federal help to combat rising costs, Head Start looks to Massachusetts for more help – The Boston Globe
In Massachusetts, roughly 1,300 slots for children across Head Start’s 28 agencies have been eliminated in the last three years because federal funding has plateaued over that time, while the cost of running the program continues to rise, according to the Massachusetts Head Start Association. Nationally, Head Start enrollment dropped from 1.1 million kids in 2013 to around 785,000 in 2022, according to research by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
“If they didn’t get into a Head Start program, they would be sitting at home,” said Brittany Acosta, a Head Start parent in Dorchester.
It’s teachers are drastically underpaid, and there’s a serious need for a rainy day-type fund should the federal government shut down again, the association says. As they’ve done in years past, state lawmakers have offered to provide financial relief, but the Massachusetts Head Start Association’s request for 3 percent above the amount it received last year, an additional $4.6 million to help its staff keep up with the state’s rising cost of living, so far has not been allocated.
Last year, President Trump’s leaked budget proposal revealed he considered eliminating Head Start entirely. Then, in the summer, he cut off Head Start enrollment for immigrants without legal status. And during the fall’s government shutdown, four Head Start centers in Massachusetts closed because they couldn’t access their funding.
Trump’s latest budget proposal shows a fourth year without increasing funding for the program, which was established in the mid-1960s.
Michelle Haimowitz, executive director of the Massachusetts Head Start Association, said the program doesn’t want to eliminate more child slots than it already has, but paying teachers a competitive salary is equally important in order to keep them from leaving for higher paying jobs. Head Start teachers make under $50,000 annually compared to over $85,000 for the average Massachusetts kindergarten teacher.
“It’s an impossible choice,” Haimowitz said. “When we reduce the size of our programs, we’re not reducing the size of the need.”
Massachusetts is one of few states that supplements federal funding for Head Start, and last year it increased the program’s state grant from $5 million to $20 million, adding to the $189 million in federal aid it receives in this state.
“We can’t run a program without giving staff a raise for three years,” Haimowitz said. “Our next fight now is not just for survival, but it’s for thriving and growth.”
The Massachusetts House Ways and Means Committee on Wednesday released its budget, which doesn’t grant Head Start’s request of a 3 percent boost. But state Representative Christopher Worrell filed an amendment for additional funding. Worrell, whose district covers parts of Dorchester and Roxbury, said he loves Head Start’s embrace of culture, recalling one visit to a center where he could smell staff cooking stew chicken, a traditional Caribbean dish.
“I’ve been to dozens of schools throughout the district, and you don’t get that home-cooked meal,” Worrell said. “[The state is] stepping up and doing the best we can with what we have.”
At the Action for Boston Community Development’s Head Start and Early Head Start center in Dorchester, the children of Classroom 7 arrived one Monday morning and dove into bins of magnetic tiles before their teachers, Paola Polanco and Leolina Rasundar Chinnappa, served breakfast. Acosta dropped off her 4-year-old daughter, Violeta, before reporting to her teaching position at the center, where several other Head Start parents also work.
“It’s important for all Head Start parents to have the opportunity to give their child an experience in a learning environment before they actually start kindergarten,” Acosta said.
Beyond providing early education and care to children of low-income families, from birth to age 5, the program helps them access other resources, including mental health services, SNAP benefits, homelessness assistance, and employment opportunities.
It also serves as daycare for parents who might not be able to afford it, while they’re at work.
Research has shown the importance of preschool in a child’s development with one 2023 study, focused on Boston public preschools, finding that it improves student behavior and increases the likelihood of high school graduation and college enrollment.
For Rickencia Clerveaux and Christopher Mclean, the Dorchester Head Start center is the only place they feel comfortable sending their 3-year-old son, Shontz, who is on the autism spectrum. Shontz’s stimming — repetitive movements that stimulate the senses — has reduced, and his speech has improved since he joined the center in 2024, Clerveaux said.
His parents say he’s also come out of his shell. Mclean now drops his son off and gets a simple “bye” as Shontz joins his classmates, he said.
He and Clerveaux said they appreciate the specialized attention Shontz can receive from teachers, such as when staff identified that Shontz might have hearing issues. His parents were able to follow up with their doctor and get Shontz to have surgery to improve his hearing.
“It’s a safe net for parents,” Clerveaux said. “There’s so many ways that him being here helps him grow better.”
Without Head Start, Clerveaux said a lot of pressure would be put on parents to find care for their children, “knowing that they’re already struggling or not getting the ends to meet.”
“That’s a burden for everybody in the community,” she said. “If there’s no funding, there’s no daycare and parents cannot work.”
Lauren Albano can be reached at lauren.albano@globe.com. Follow her on X @LaurenAlbano_.
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