How Ohio’s Unified Ecosystem is Driving Growth in Life Sciences: Q&A with JobsOhio’s Tyler Allchin

Britt Whitmore, Executive Producer of STAT Brand Studio, recently sat down with Tyler Allchin, Managing Director of Healthcare at JobsOhio at Breakthrough Summit East to discuss how the Ohio Discovery Corridor is a one stop shop for companies looking to grow in Ohio.

JobsOhio is here at the Breakthrough Summit promoting the Ohio Discovery Corridor. What is that exactly?

The Ohio Discovery Corridor is a collection of research institutions, clinical research organizations, contract development manufacturing organizations for pharma and biotech, and a handful of other service providers that have come together to deliver real value for pharmaceutical and biotech companies that are already in Ohio. But we're hoping, as a one-door access point for the entire market.

This is the first time our best and brightest research institutions and the surrounding industry have come together under one banner to drive growth in the life sciences. So, we're really excited at JobsOhio. This is the next step in the evolution of our innovation district initiatives that we kicked off in 2020 at the peak of the pandemic when a lot of states were pulling back from investing in life sciences.

Our leadership, thanks to our board and CEO, J.P. Nauseef, and our governor, Mike DeWine, put a historic investment into innovation in life sciences. This Ohio Discovery Corridor is that coming to fruition and going to market as one single team, which is really exciting for us.

We've got three hubs: Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati. Each has its own strengths and are led by world-class research institutions. But we really know that our best days are in front of us if we go to market together as one team.

Why are you promoting this now?

The timing is ideal for us, as we've continued to win more and more projects in the space. We've had a lot of historic wins in 2021. We were fortunate enough to win at Amgen, aseptic fill facility just outside Columbus and New Albany, Ohio. That was really a landmark moment for us as we began to evolve this product for the pharmaceutical world as they onshore and restore more of their supply chain and their manufacturing operation.

It's also really critical for the innovators that we know are present at our research institutions, like the Cleveland Clinic, The Ohio State University, Nationwide Children's Hospital, and Cincinnati Children's Hospital. We know that we can do more for them. They are already doing great work in the state but also bring that product to market nationally and globally. The timing couldn't be better for us to be at Stat Summit East — bringing that product to additional innovators that are competing here today.

Many cities and states undertake these innovation district efforts. What makes the Ohio Discovery Corridor different?

The model has been around for a long time. We're certainly not the first to undertake this effort. I think a couple of things for us. One, emphasizing the statewide approach. The Ohio Discovery Corridor is the single point of access, that front door. We have a team that can connect you to researchers and clinicians, key opinion leaders, clinical trial networks, and lab space across all three of our innovation districts in Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati.

Most innovation districts focus on one city, maybe one region. Ours is really leveraging the entirety of that statewide value prop in biotech and pharma to bring growth in innovation and bring your commercialization to market faster than you can in other places. You know, and I would be remiss if I also didn't mention Team Ohio’s approach to this. We know that everyone has hospitals and universities that they're proud of.

They have service providers on the manufacturing and clinical research side of things. But we believe that we bring an Ohio approach to it. Access. Value. Speed to market. That's different than maybe our coastal competition. And that's a good thing in this market that's managing a lot of uncertainty. We have the ability to build up the partners that we have in the state at a pace that is needed in this industry.

The onshoring and reshoring of biomanufacturing have been in the news recently. How is Ohio approaching this market?

For us, we know that the market, for a lot of macro forces, will be bringing more and more pharma manufacturing and likely even broader than that manufacturing in general, both onshoring and reshoring, to the states. We see that as a tailwind for us. Built in America should also mean built in Ohio.

Our product is based around infrastructure and sites for development and talent. We've recently launched a statewide biomanufacturing technician boot camp that's designed to create a pipeline of students, some of which are going to college, but a lot have maybe a two-year degree or straight out of high school and are receiving the skills they need to work in pharma manufacturing facility or pharma packaging and distribution.

A lot of what we're putting together fits nicely with the themes that we're seeing in the market right now to capture, hopefully, our more than fair share of these projects that are coming through. You might have recently seen that Eli Lilly had an announcement around calling for sites in pharma manufacturing. That's just an example of one of the market leaders.

I think you're going to see more of that over the next 3 to 5 years with both American and global pharma companies looking to site new manufacturing and distribution sites.

STAT readers may know Ohio for its emergence as a leader in gene therapy. The cell and gene therapy market has faced challenges. What's new on that front?

Our partners across the state in selling gene therapy have not been immune to the downturn. Maybe a little bit of a market plateau over the last couple of years in the space. I will say that the investments that our partners have continued to make, primarily in Columbus and Cincinnati, in the gene therapy space have been outstanding. We're ready to grow coming out the other side of this.

If you rewound, call it five or six years in the Ohio market, we’ve had very few contract development manufacturing organizations on the gene therapy side of things. Now we've got a handful. We've got Andelyn Biosciences in Columbus. We have Forge Biologics, which was recently acquired by Ajinomoto in Columbus. We have the bones and infrastructure to help innovators thrive in this space, whether it's on the clinical trials side of things or commercial launch. When the market gets back to playing offense, we'll be ready.