Joel Marcus’ fortunes have risen with those of the life sciences industry. The executive chairman of life sciences builder Alexandria Real Estate Equities first bought laboratory space in Seattle in 1996, two years after founding the company when biotech was still emerging as an industry.
Alexandria is now a publicly traded giant with a market cap of more than $30 billion, millions of square feet of lab space throughout the U.S. and a venture capital arm, Alexandria Venture Investments. And his Pasadena, Calif.-based company has helped make the Seattle area one of the country’s top ten biotech clusters.
Just as Marcus saw the rise of biotech and capitalized on it, he is reading the tea leaves as the pandemic fuels investor interest in biotech and upends business models. He talked about the future of the industry in Seattle and beyond in an interview with Life Science Washington CEO Leslie Alexandre, at the trade group’s annual summit last week.
In Seattle alone, the company’s buildings house Sana Biotechnology, the new headquarters of Adaptive Biotechnologies, and labs for Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, to name a few. It built the headquarters for Juno Therapeutics, the cell therapy biotech acquired by Celgene for $9 billion in 2018, and is developing a life sciences hub at Seattle’s almost three-acre Mercer Mega Block. And its venture arm has backed Seattle companies such as Silverback Therapeutics and cell therapy startup Umoja Biopharma.
Alexandria is also snapping up real estate in nearby Bothell, Wash., where it houses the headquarters of global biotech Seagen.
Marcus spoke with Alexandre about the rise of a “spoke and hub” model of business, the growth of biotech clusters, and the need to shore up supply chains. The pandemic also revealed the need for complex therapeutics, making the Seattle area well positioned to forge the next generation of medicines.
Read one for highlights from the interview below, edited for clarity and brevity.
