New jobs, bigger facilities, local support: New Mexico’s bioscience industry is alive and kicking
Albuquerque Journal, by Kevin Robinson-Avila / Journal Staff Writer, Published January 15, 2023
Pharmaceutical research, development and manufacturing company Curia broke ground this fall on a $100 million expansion of its Albuquerque operations, potentially adding nearly 300 new local jobs to its current workforce.
It’s the second major expansion here since 2018 by the biotech company, which already employs about 400 people at two locations, including a 135,000-square-foot facility at the Midtown Business Park at I-25 and Montgomery, plus an 80,000-square-foot facility near Balloon Fiesta Park.
Curia’s Oct. 27 groundbreaking coincided with another major biotechnology industry announcement that same week in Las Cruces, where remote health-monitoring services company Electronic Caregiver reported closing on $42.5 million in fresh funding from private investors. That makes a total of $110 million in private equity raised by Electronic Caregiver since launching in 2009.
The new funding will help accelerate the firm’s aggressive expansion plans, which include hiring another 770 employees over the next few years, about 95% of them to be located at the company’s 10-story downtown office tower. The state and the city of Las Cruces provided about $1.2 million in Local Economic Development Act, or LEDA, funding last year to help remodel and equip Electronic Caregiver’s office building, which the firm purchased outright over the summer after leasing space there for more than a decade.
The state also contributed $5 million in LEDA money to Curia for its expansion plans in Albuquerque, with the city expected to kick in another $500,000.
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who attended Curia’s groundbreaking, said that the company’s investment and expansion plans reflect the state’s growing reputation as a bustling magnet for the life sciences industry.
“New Mexico has become a sophisticated biosciences hub that continues to attract companies leading the way in global science and healthcare,” Lujan Grisham said in a statement. “These are high-paying jobs of the future that will fortify New Mexico’s families and expand economic security for our graduates who want to remain in the state to live and work.”
While big announcements, the Curia and Electronic Caregiver expansions are only the latest developments in New Mexico’s burgeoning bioscience industry, which has grown exponentially over the past decade, and particularly over the past five years, after lawmakers approved the creation of a state-funded Bioscience Authority in 2017 to help promote local industry development. That’s led to more unified public and private efforts to help newly formed startups launch and grow, expand existing businesses, and attract more companies, entrepreneurs and investment capital to the state.
Those efforts are boosted by New Mexico’s vibrant startup ecosystem, which offers broad wrap-around services through incubators, business accelerators and access to early-stage venture funding. That support base has, in turn, inspired local entrepreneurs to turn a lot more biotechnology innovation from the state’s research universities and national labs into marketable products and services.
More work is needed to build on today’s momentum, according to local industry experts, beginning with additional state and private-sector funding to convert fledgling startups and existing businesses into thriving, sustainable enterprises. And to get that ball rolling, the Bioscience Authority is seeking $50 million in state money in this year’s legislative session for a new co-investment fund to allow the Authority to invest jointly in local bioscience companies alongside other venture firms.
Apart from capital, more physical infrastructure — such as incubation labs with high-tech equipment and collaborative office space — is also critical.
But, given the state’s accelerated bioscience development in recent years, local leaders say New Mexico is now approaching a turning point that, with additional statewide efforts, could move the industry from promising momentum to critical mass.
Doug Ziedonis — University of New Mexico Health System CEO and executive vice president for UNM health sciences — called it a “critically important” moment for the local industry.
“We’re at a very exciting point now with our research universities, state agencies, government officials and industry all coming together around strategic plans to push forward,” Ziedonis told the Journal. “… We’ve seen how successful collaborative efforts in such other sectors as the film industry have been, and we know we can do the same in the bioscience arena. We have great momentum and, by working together, we can really grow this industry, not just in Albuquerque, but across the state.”
