For the first time, GEN examines the top regions and top states just below the 10 largest regions for life sciences activity, as the field looks beyond the East and West Coasts for growth

The days of biotech businesses and institutions limiting their research and commercial activity to top clusters like Boston/Cambridge, MA, and the San Francisco Bay Area are passing, as the life sciences expand their horizons to regions and states not usually thought of as hotspots for the industry.

“Life science entrepreneurship and new product development is flourishing outside traditional coastal epicenters, creating a dynamic and distributed map of regional hubs across the United States,” wrote John Flavin, founder and CEO of venture capital firm Portal Innovations, and Pat Flavin, John’s brother and Portal’s president, in Biotech’s Future Will Be More Distributed, a guest editorial published December 15, 2025, by Timmerman Report.

Portal itself reflects that trend, having U.S. locations not only in Chicago (No. 9 on GEN’s most recent A-List of Top 10 U.S. Biopharma Clusters, published June 1), but in Providence, RI; the New York suburb of New Brunswick, NJ; and Houston (Portal also has a fifth office in Dublin, Ireland).

The Flavin brothers cited several factors in the industry becoming more ‘‘distributed” or scattered beyond the largest clusters:

• Academic research shifting—Over the past decade, research has shifted to a translational focus, to address the need for more practical application in life sciences.
• Federal funding flattening—Cutbacks in or leveling amounts of NIH funding (depending on the region) have forced universities to adopt new avenues for attracting and retaining research talent—such as pursuing closer relationships with industry.
• COVID-19—The pandemic that wreaked havoc on the world “acted as a global shock to the life sciences innovation system, accelerating pre-existing trends and forcing a rapid re-evaluation of how and where innovation happens,” John and Pat Flavin wrote.

The growth of biotech hubs outside of the top 10 regions and states ranked since 2014 in GEN’s nationally- and regionally-cited top 10 clusters A-List has increasingly sparked a question among readers: What are the next up-and-coming hubs for life sciences activity?

GEN attempts to answer this question through this first-ever A-List of Next 10 U.S. Biopharma Clusters. This list is actually three lists in one: A top five ranking of emerging regions below the top 10 long highlighted by this publication; a top five ranking of states that have shown initiative and accomplishment in building up their life-sci ecosystems but whose individual regional clusters alone do not rise to the top; and an unranked list of up-and-coming regions and states to watch, based on recent announcements.

See the full list at Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News.