Life Sciences & Biotech

Sector Data

Known as the birthplace of biotechnology, the San Francisco Bay Area lays claim to the largest concentration of biotech companies in the nation.
Direct and indirect employment together amounts to 250,000 employees. The Bay Area employs more than the half of the Biomedical industry workforce in California.
The San Francisco Bay Area is home to more than 25 venture capital funded Biotech companies, including Proteus Digital Health Inc., Versartis Inc., Coherus Biosciences Inc., VoloAgri Inc., and Avalanche Biotechnologies Inc.
In the second quarter of 2014, the San Francisco, Berkeley, and San Jose region was listed as the top funded U.S. region, receiving a total of $632 million in biotech venture capital funding.
The largest aggregation of research universities and federal research institutions in the U.S. is in the Bay Area.
The Bay Area universities produce more Ph.D. scientists & engineers than any other area in U.S.
UCSF has created the Mission Bay campus, a Bioentrepreneurship Center. It offers mentoring and training for faculty members whose discoveries might form the basis of a spin-off, as well as funding for translational drug development. The center is supported by the QB3 Institute.
As of September 2014, the Biotech sector contained 1,662 employers in San Francisco County, and employed 164,000 workers in the San Francisco Metropolitan area.
For San Francisco, the Life Sciences & Biotech sector generated nearly $4 billion in economic activity, $1.4 billion in income and added 20,955 jobs.
For the Bay Area, the Life Sciences & Biotech sector generated $95 billion of economic activity, nearly $30 billion in income, and added 300,073 jobs.

Investment in Life Sciences & Biotech in the region:

World Class Life Sciences Incubators

San Francisco’s life sciences and biotech companies are largely flourishing, thriving and growing in Mission Bay. Recently, more than 10 incubators have given rise to nearly 100 early-stage companies. In addition to the QB3 UCSF and QB3 Berkeley incubators, the QB3 Incubator Network has launched two new incubators in recent years.
2013 saw the introduction of the QB3@953, a full-service, standalone biotech incubator near the UCSF Mission Bay campus. In 2014, the network opened StartX-QB3, the first med/tech incubator near the Stanford campus.
Also located in Mission Bay are the U.S. Innovation Center (USIC) and the recently founded CoLaborator, a 6,000-square-foot incubator space for start-ups, both opened by Bayer Healthcare in 2011.

Available Space

Mission Bay, the hub of San Francisco’s life sciences industry, spans 303 acres in the heart of the burgeoning and dynamic South of Market area. This hub of knowledge and innovation is also home to prominent private sector companies, including: Celgene Corp, Presidio Pharmaceuticals, Inc., FibroGen, Ion Torrent Systems, Inc., Bayer, Pfizer and Nextar. Mission Bay accommodates 6,000 units of housing (28 percent affordable), 4.4 million square feet of office and R&D space, a 57-acre UCSF research campus and 550-bed medical center, 500,000 square feet of retail, a 500 room hotel, 49 acres of new public open space, a new 500-student public school, a new public library, a new fire and police stations and other community facilities.
Alexandria Real Estate Equities, the preeminent international developer of life science-focused properties, added 155,000 square feet of move-in ready, turnkey labs/office suites, with an additional 300,000 square feet of space.
The China Basin Project, immediately adjacent to Mission Bay, has 222,000 square feet of flexible space, and premium office space in a new Mission Bay building.
More than 80 percent new and under construction life-science inventory in the Bay Area is located in San Francisco and San Mateo counties with already more than 35 percent of life science real estate located in the city of South San Francisco alone.
Other areas of the City offer attractive opportunities as well, including the nearby Financial District and South of Market area.

Additional data is available online:

BayBio Institute The BayBio Institute focuses on supporting innovation, entrepreneurship, workforce development and education for the Northern California life science industry through purchasing programs, events and advocacy.

The MoneyTree Report The MoneyTree Report is a study about Venture Capital Investment in the United States carried out collaborately by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association based upon data from Thomson Reuters. They provide very current regional numbers about capital investment in key industries.

California Healthcare Institute The California Healthcare Institute released in collaboration with BayBio and PwC the 2011 California Biomedical Industry report which features recent in-depth research in employment, investment and other trends in the biomedical sector in California.