Paul Bass Photo
Sean Cassidy and Steve Weiss at WNHH FM.
Arvinas stayed. It grew. It kept growing. It has dropped its anchor to keep on growing, here in New Haven.
Policymakers have been banking on that storyline when it comes to biotech companies like Arvinas that emerge from discoveries made in Yale research labs.
That vision underlay the original creation of Science Park 40 years ago. But many start-ups ended up moving elsewhere when it came to time to hire more staff and create and market products.
Arvinas reflects a newer trend of companies that are staying put to grow and form the backbone of a top emerging sector of New Haven’s “eds and meds” economy of the future.
Arvinas — which develops disease-fighting drugs based on a protein degradation technology developed by Yale bio professor Craig Crews — has just celebrated its 10th anniversary. It has two initial drugs — to fight advanced breast cancer and prostate cancer — well along the pipeline of clinical trials. It has staffers working on developing other drugs based on the technology to battle both cancer and other debilitating diseases as well. Over 450 people now work at the company, with more in the pipeline. Its footprint has grown to 60,000 square feet in Science Park, and it’s about to move into an additional 160,000 square feet on three floors of the soon-to-open 101 College St. biosciences tower. It has raised $2 billion in capital to date.
“We’re here for the long haul. We expect to be in New Haven for our lifetime,” CFO Sean Cassidy said Tuesday during a 10th-anniversary conversation on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven” program.
The company has hired 150 people in the last year alone, researchers and finance folks along with an emerging sales and marketing team for when the company’s drugs hit the market as early as an anticipated 2025 roll-out, according to Senior VP Steve Weiss.
That changing storyline has helped make that happen: In the five years Weiss has overseen human resources at Arvinas, he has seen prospective employees move from “neutral” to positive about New Haven as a factor in their decision about whether to take positions here. New Haven has had an uphill battle to compete for top talent with the tech powerhouse hubs of Silicon Valley and Boston/Cambridge. The increasing number of firms growing here, reflected in the construction of new tech towers like 100 and 101 College, has helped convince some couples to take the risk on moving here: If one member of the couple is hired at Arvinas and the other takes a job with a different tech or biosciences firm, and the latter firm fails to survive the Darwinian start-up market, the couple often needs to have faith that enough similar companies are in town that other jobs will be available.
There’s still work to be done to have a critical mass of couples develop, Cassidy said. “We’re almost a hub. We’re not quite there yet.”
He said Connecticut needs to do more to help more investment flow, by expanding research and development tax credits to match those officered in New York and Boston. He participated in an industry lobbying effort to make that happen in this year’s state legislative session. The effort fell short; it will continue.
Click on the video to watch the full discussion with Arvinas’s Sean Cassidy and Steve Weiss on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven.” Click here to listen to and subscribe to other episodes of “Dateline New Haven.”
About 10 years ago when I moved back to New Haven from Boston, I spoke with a friend there about New Haven lacking the critical mass to keep startups. Things have changed since then, as evidenced by this article. Let's hope Arvinas is a trend setter, staying and growing to make New Haven a self-perpetuating biotech hub.