The Coalition of State Bioscience Institutes (CSBI) joined InnovATEBIO at National Summit to Address Booming Bioscience Industry’s Talent Needs

Summit convened diverse stakeholders in a state ecosystem approach aimed at meeting industry’s urgent workforce gaps

June 30, 2023 | WASHINGTON–( BUSINESS WIRE )–Coalition of State Bioscience Institutes (CSBI) and InnovATEBIO convened a national Summit this week at the National Academies of Sciences in Washington, D.C., tasked with developing workforce strategies designed to sustain U.S. leadership in life sciences innovation. Both national organizations and their multi-state members helped to comprise over 250 attendees for the National Science Foundation- (NSF-)supported  Envisioning the Next Bioscience Workforce Summit , which brought together thought leaders from industry, academia, and government to forecast the continuing wave of discoveries and corresponding talent needs from the industry’s biopharmaceutical, biomedical device, bioprocessing, bioengineering, synthetic biology, and food production subsectors.

INNOVATEBIO + CSBI logo lockup

The first-of-its-kind assembly of diverse public and private stakeholders were brought together by InnovATEBIO, an NSF-funded National Advanced Technology Education Center that supports biotechnology education through its robust network of community colleges, and CSBI, a national coalition of bioscience trade associations and institutes who are committed to delivering industry-led workforce development programs. The collaboration between CSBI and InnovATEBIO has intensified over the last five years as part of an effort to address an outsized demand for talent by the life sciences industry and to open access to careers for a broad and diverse talent base.

Inspired by the innovation forecasts from leaders from the industry’s diverse segments, the Summit’s second day catalyzed state teams, comprised of stakeholders from industry, academia and workforce and economic development organizations, to collaborate on strategic solutions to address workforce gaps in their states.

“The bioscience industry’s workforce challenges are too urgent for any single stakeholder to try and address alone,” said Linnea Fletcher, Executive Director of the InnovATEBIO National Biotech Education Center. “We know that some states are doing an admirable job of bringing their community college and other academic partners together with industry, trade associations and governmental agencies to develop targeted programs that both meet and stay abreast of the industry’s rapidly evolving talent needs. We hope the Summit and its aftermath will provide more states with tools to develop similar strategic collaborations that will address gaps in their own states, a clear win-win for the industry and the highly trained students coming out of our ATE and other programs.”

“What I don’t think many recognize is how significantly many of these ATE and other academic programs can – and are – rapidly responding to urgent calls from bioscience employers for highly skilled technicians,” said Liisa Bozinovic, CSBI Chair and Executive Director of the Oregon Bioscience Association. “These programs are not only meeting companies’ immediate talent needs, but also offering a diverse set of students an accessible and rewarding pathway with multiple options for career and educational growth. That is what we sought to do with this Summit – to help more states develop the partnerships and funding to address gaps in their own regions.”

InnovATEBIO and its partners will continue to support the work of the state teams in the aftermath of the Summit to both broaden and deepen this important work.

For additional information on the Summit, click  here.

About the Coalition for State Biotech Institutes (CSBI)

The Coalition for State Biotech Institutes is dedicated to ensuring America’s leadership in bioscience innovation by delivering industry-led life sciences education and workforce development programs through a nationally coordinated effort. Programs are uniquely positioned for the life sciences industry to deliver, replicable in states across the U.S., extensible to other STEM industry sectors and are fully aligned with Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Learn more at  www.csbioinstitutes.org  where you can download our  2023 Life Science Workforce Trends Report.

About InnovATE BIO , the National Biotechnology Education Center:  InnovATE BIO  is supported by a five-year Advanced Technical Education (ATE) grant to advance biotechnology technician education nationally through cutting-edge professional training for instructors and share the best practices among community college programs, administrators, trade organizations, and industry. The Center seeks to develop a collaborative infrastructure that supports innovation and promptly addresses the needs of the biotechnology community. InnovATE BIO  aims to coordinate ATE-funded biotechnology projects to identify opportunities to generate partnerships and collaborations that will accelerate innovation in biotechnology education. In addition to these efforts, it seeks to monitor and address emerging biotechnology industry and technician workforce trends.

Follow Innov ATEBIO  on  FacebookLinkedIn , and  Twitter  at #InnovATEBIO to stay current on biotechnology education in community colleges. View posts at #EnvisioningBioscience for the Envisioning the Next Bioscience Workforce Summit.

Contacts

Maria Thacker, Georgia Bio
mthacker@gabio.org
404-920-2042

By Maria Thacker Goethe July 28, 2025
By: Clary Estes “Small companies are the lifeblood of the industry and a lot of what they do, and what they’re experiencing, greatly affects the industry as a whole,” said Chad Wessel, Director of Industry Analysis at the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO). He spoke with Bio.News in an interview about BIO’s 2025 report, “ The State of Emerging Biotech Companies: Investment, Deal, and Pipeline Trends ,” focused on the biotech industry from the early-stage perspective. As researchers found, the current landscape is challenging, but there are still opportunities. “In the last couple years, we’ve had a little bit of a contraction of the industry. During COVID, we kind of had this sugar rush for the industry,” said Wessel. “A lot of companies were being created. A lot of money was being thrown out there. A lot more companies were being funded. And in the last couple of years, there has been a little bit more of a correction, and we’re seeing funding levels going down to what we’ve seen prior to COVID.” “But when you add on other challenges, like the political landscape and everything, it is leaning towards a very challenging environment for a lot of companies,” he continued. Bearish venture capital “In venture capital, yes, you have a lot of money, but it’s going to fewer companies at higher average amounts,” explained Wessel. “It’s creating this competitive haves and have-nots type marketplace or environment. So it just makes it a lot more competitive and more challenging to raise funds.” Instead of finding new opportunities, venture capitalists are investing more in companies they are already working with. As the BIO report found, the amount of new series A-1 investment rounds into biopharma remained flat between 2023 and 2024, while the number of U.S. companies receiving their first series A-1 tranche went from 102 to 100. This is in comparison to 181 in 2021, reflecting the COVID influx to emerging biotechs. Comparatively, as the BIO report found, the average amount for A-1 transactions in the U.S. saw a remarkable increase of 700% in the last 15 years, with the average amount raised sitting at $60 million in 2024. The rest of the world stayed relatively steady in comparison to the U.S.’s persistent growth. And with the more bearish tendencies of investors, Wessel and team observed an interesting trend. “2024 was the first year that clinical programs actually raised more venture dollars than pre-clinical, which hasn’t happened in a while,” said Wessel. “I think the last time that happened was in 2018. This ties into some of the information that we’ve heard anecdotally, which is that a lot of VC firms are focusing on the companies that they currently have in their portfolio, rather than adding new companies.” Licensing and deals dip It is not too surprising, then, that as investors shore up what they already have in the pipelines, the R&D pipeline and licensing have slowed somewhat. As the BIO report observed, long-term growth in the R&D pipeline continues with an overall growth of 145% since 2010. Yet, the 2024 expansion rate (4.6%) subsided slightly, trailing the 5-year average of 6.7%. “The growth has slowed on new programs, and more of those programs are being licensed with larger companies,” explained Wessel. “There are fewer options for big companies to backfill their pipeline with products because a lot of them are already out.” The data also shows a notable slowing of the R&D typically done by large biopharma companies. “The areas that are not licensed out as much are the ones with some of the higher patient populations and subsequently the ones that are not being run by small companies,” said Wessel. “These are areas like endocrine and cardiovascular diseases, which are areas where there are a lot of things like type 2 diabetes, psoriasis , high blood pressure, etc. Those all have a lot of burden on the healthcare sector or the patient population, and those aren’t really being worked on that much by smaller companies.” Comparatively – and also not surprisingly – oncology has stayed at the top of the clinical pipeline, along with neurology and infectious disease. “Same thing with licensing,” said Wessel. “While there are deals that are still happening, the upfront amount is lower currently than it has been in years past, and most of the value is tied up into milestone payments, which may or may not happen.” This is also being felt when it comes to new companies going public, which has been an oft-discussed challenge in the biotech industry for the last few years. “The IPO market has still been challenging,” Wessel says. “We went from having 40 companies a year going public, down to 15 in 2023, and now we’re back up in 2025, but it’s still down from the pre-COVID era timeframe.” Biopharma layoffs Another notable characteristic of this year’s biopharma landscape has been uptick in layoffs. “Sometimes it’s just the nature of the economy. But the amount that we’ve seen in the last few years is quite a bit higher,” said Wessel. “To counter that, we don’t really have a way of measuring job creation, but we do know it’s happening. We just are unable to put a value on that.” The BIO report found that layoff announcements ticked up to 65 during Q1 of 2025. While two points lower than Q1 of the previous year, this still marks a jump from 2024’s Q2, Q3, and Q4, which saw the number of layoff announcements at 41, 54, and 46, respectively. All in all, Wessel noted, the biotech industry is still in a bit of a holding period when it comes to trying to navigate the coming months. “It’s too early to be able to say much about the coming years for the industry based on these numbers,” he said. “It takes a little time for reality to kind of catch up for multiple reasons. But what I can say is that we do know that companies are reducing their pipelines. We do know that companies are laying off individuals. We do know that companies are having a challenge of raising funds and continue doing their best to try to maintain operations as long as they can until they can get funds.” “We know the challenge is out there, but we’re going to have to kind of wait and see a little bit on the data side of things to understand how everything is going to catch up going forward.” Source: https://bio.news/bioeconomy/bio-2025-state-of-emerging-biotechs-report-market-trends/?mkt_tok=NDkwLUVIWi05OTkAAAGb7m5php-rTOf0a_GTaj5pj7Zl-HlpVM25WtyVvCYudM82a9GKjoazUg9sqU66hlAbhqbEuYvcX3C4EqfBG7Q
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