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Delaware's Bioscience Moment
Leading the future with advanced manufacturing
BY MICHAEL FLEMING
– President Joseph R. Biden, Jr.
IN A MATTER OF TWO WEEKS this past summer the Delaware bioscience community had a remarkable two-fer when it comes to transformational events.
The first was the announcement of a several hundred-million-dollar-investment in a new pharmaceutical development and manufacturing facility in Middletown. This operation could employ as many as a thousand workers in a few years, across roles ranging from manufacturing to management to administration.
The second related item was news that NIIMBL—the National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals, based at the University of Delaware STAR Campus—will receive $153 million from the U.S. Department of Commerce to continue its mission of driving innovation in domestic biopharmaceutical manufacturing by developing flexible, agile, and costeffective manufacturing processes. The funds will also enable NIIMBL efforts to help prepare for future pandemics by developing better processes for manufacturing vaccines and therapeutics for COVID-19 and other coronavirus strains.
These major developments signal two important, related dynamics: first, that investment in U.S.-based biopharmaceutical manufacturing is a significant strategic imperative both from a business as well as a national security standpoint. The pandemic has exposed the great risks of overreliance on foreign supply chains for our medicine and other essential goods, and the domestication of advanced manufacturing is only going to accelerate.
This reality is underlined by the Biden administration’s push to boost U.S. manufacturing of essential medicines through establishment of a public-private partnership to enhance onshoring efforts and improve technologies for the production of active pharmaceutical ingredients (API).
The second dynamic is all Delaware: our state’s life science sector is thriving, and with these announcements—along with plans for a new science and innovation park at the former DuPont Chestnut Run site—we are poised to be a global leader in advanced manufacturing.
Seizing that opportunity will require exquisite collaboration across private industry, higher education, and government. You do not need a Ph.D. for most of these great advanced manufacturing jobs of the future (or even a bachelors), but they do involve significant training. Delaware must be ready with a capable talent pool and the right programs to ensure we can deliver the workers these exciting new high-tech operations need.
The state also needs to continue to push policies that will incentivize and support investment in the growth of new science and technology businesses. Programs like the Site Readiness Fund and the $10 million in funds for new lab space, both recently approved by the General Assembly, will do just that.
This kind of moment—the chance to secure this state’s economic future based on innovation—does not come often. Let’s be sure we make the most of it.
Michael Fleming is president of the Delaware BioScience Association.
