Greater Richmond’s strong existing
pharmaceutical/biotech/chemical
industry base and skilled
manufacturing workforce provides an
ideal location for life sciences
companies. The chemical industry is
Greater Richmond’s largest
manufacturing sector with
approximately 6,800 employees. The
area’s existing industry leaders in
life sciences include Boehringer
Ingelheim Chemicals, PPD Development,
Analytics Corp., E. I. DuPont, Wako
Chemicals, Commonwealth
Biotechnologies, Honeywell and Wyeth.
Opportunity to partner with Virginia
Commonwealth University (VCU) and the
VCU Health System. The system
includes the 820-bed Medical College
of Virginia (MCV) Hospitals,
outpatient clinics and MCV Physicians
– a 600-physician, faculty group
practice. VCU is ranked by the
Carnegie Foundation as one of the
nation’s top research universities and
received $227.2 million in externally
funded research in FY07.
MCV Hospitals is designated as a Level
I trauma center and VCU’s Massey
Cancer Center is designated by the
National Cancer Institute as a
clinical research center. MCV
Hospitals is the most comprehensive
teaching medical center in Virginia
and is regularly ranked among the top
hospitals in America. VCU’s School of
Medicine is one of the nation’s
largest medical schools, houses one of
the nation’s oldest transplant
programs, and is internationally known
for research in head injury, drug
abuse, and burn injury.
The Medical School’s Department of
Pharmacology & Toxicology ranks in the
top 10 of NIH funded Pharmacology &
Toxicology programs
U.S. News and World Report has ranked
twenty of VCU’s graduate and
professional programs as among the
best of their kind in the nation
including Community Health, Health
Services Administration, Physical
Therapy, Occupational Therapy, and
Clinical Psychology. The Nurse
Anesthesia program was ranked best in
the nation. Seven VCU schools are
ranked in the top 60 programs
including: the School of Nursing, the
School of Medicine, the School of
Dentistry, and the School of Pharmacy.
VCU’s School of Engineering offers
undergraduate and graduate degrees in
Biomedical, Chemical and Life Science,
Electrical and Computer, and
Mechanical Engineering and in Computer
Science.
VCU offers drug development
technologies in all stages from
discovery to drug design and
development through production. Over
100 clinical trials are currently
underway.
Dr. John B. Fenn, VCU research
professor in chemistry, won the 2002
Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Dr. Fenn
was honored for his work with mass
spectrometry, enabling chemists to
rapidly identify what proteins a
sample contains.
Access to the Virginia BioTechnology
Research Park, a joint initiative of
VCU, the Commonwealth of Virginia, and
the city of Richmond. The park is
situated on 34-acres adjacent to the
VCU Health System campus and will
accommodate 3,000 researchers,
scientists and engineers in 1.9
million square feet of space when
completed.
The Virginia BioTechnology Research
Park currently has nine buildings with
over 1.1 million square feet of space
and about 2,000 employees. The park
is home to a unique mix of more than
55 bioscience companies; research
institutes; state and national medical
laboratories; and organizations
involved with forensics, biotoxins
testing, and management of the
nation’s organ transplantation
process.
The Bioscience Incubator, Virginia’s
first technology incubator, is housed
in the Virginia Biotechnology Center,
the Virginia BioTechnology Research
Park’s first building. Since its
founding in 1996, more than 60
companies have started in the
incubator, including 18 from VCU.
Over thirty have successfully
graduated, with four having relocated
to larger space in the Park. Three
companies--Insmed Inc., Allos
Therapeutics Inc., and Commonwealth
Biotechnologies, Inc.--are now
publicly traded firms.
Greater Richmond’s outstanding quality
of life makes it easy to relocate,
recruit, and retain qualified
professional and technical employees.
NewMarket (formerly Ethyl), DuPont,
Infineon, and Wyeth all successfully
relocated technical staff from other
locations to Greater Richmond in
recent years.
