About Us

Greater Richmond

Advantages for Life Sciences

Advantages for Life Sciences Companies

• 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 8,000 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, ranked by the Carnegie Foundation as one of the nation’s top research universities, received $169 million in externally funded research in FY 2001-2002.

• 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 $50 million School of Engineering offers degrees in biomedical, mechanical, electrical, computer, and chemical 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 eight buildings with over 575,000 square feet of space and about 1,300 employees. The park is home to a unique mix of more than 45 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.

• In 2003, the park opened the two newest structures, the 191,900 square foot, $63 million public health laboratory for the Virginia Division of Consolidated Laboratory Services, and the new 80,000 square foot, $17.5 million national headquarters for the United Network for Organ Sharing.

• 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 50 companies have started in the incubator, including 18 from VCU. Sixteen 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.

• Workers’ Compensation and Unemployment Compensation costs are among the lowest in the nation.

• Greater Richmond’s outstanding quality of life makes it easy to relocate, recruit, and retain qualified professional and technical employees. Ethyl, DuPont, Infineon, and Wyeth all successfully relocated technical staff from other locations to Greater Richmond in recent years.

• Specialty instrument vendors critical to high-tech bioscience production and research are located in Greater Richmond and can provide personalized service creating custom-made tools and instruments.

Bio Track LLC was developed in the Virginia BioTechnology Center biotechnology incubator and has ‘graduated’ out to a location in the BioTechnology Research Park. The company develops and commercializes biomedical products for promising R&D projects, primarily at Virginia Commonwealth University and the VCU Medical Center.