DALLAS – A coalition of science advocates wants Texas to permanently stake its claim in the biotech world by welcoming the federal government’s new biomedical research agency. And it’s waging an aggressive, targeted campaign to convince lawmakers that the state is the agency’s perfect new home.
Officially established in mid-March, the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, or ARPA-H, is an ambitious Biden administration venture to speed up biomedical and health research with $1 billion in funding. While the agency will live administratively within the National Institutes of Health, its physical location is yet to be determined.
Enter the Coalition for Health Advancement and Research in Texas, an alliance of hospital systems, research institutions and chambers of commerce dedicated to presenting Texas as the best option for the federal government’s new biotech arm.
The coalition created a detailed choose-your-own-adventure plan for ARPA-H that presents the benefits of each major city in the Lone Star State, as well as proposed building sites and institutional partners.
Dallas points to biotech hub Pegasus Park and research giant UT Southwestern in its pitch to house the agency.
“This is a really terrific opportunity to take a leap forward in breakthrough science research, and we want to be part of it,” said Thomas Graham, coalition spokesperson and CEO and president of Crosswind Media and Public Relations in Austin.
“The concept is that we want to demonstrate to the Biden administration and to members of Congress, the appropriators, that Texas is the best place for this agency. If you’re going to do it, it should be done in Texas.”
The foundation of ARPA-H in North Texas would serve as yet another investment in the area’s decades-long push to become a biotech behemoth. Already, Dallas-Fort Worth claims more than 60 biotech and life sciences companies and several prominent research universities.
Pegasus Park’s sprawling 23-acre campus, previously home to Mobil Corp., boasts a biotech-specific hub anchored by BioLabs, a coworking lab space company designed to help launch and expand other emerging companies.
In its argument for Dallas, the Coalition for Health Advancement and Research in Texas highlights Pegasus Park’s central location, less than one mile from the UT Southwestern Medical District, nine minutes from downtown Dallas, and less than 20 minutes from both Dallas Love Field and Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
“There is space there that, if the Biden administration chose to locate it in Dallas, this space is ready to move in. Same thing in Houston, same thing in San Antonio, same thing in Austin – there are places that are ready to move,” Graham said. “All they’ve got to say is ‘Yeah, we like this idea.’”
Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson put his endorsement behind the project, as did Dallas Rep. Colin Allred. ARPA-H, Allred said, has the potential to catapult the country’s health discoveries to a new level, a possibility that North Texas wants to support.
“We cannot get left behind as other nations invest in this kind of vital research,” Allred said in a statement. “We have seen this model can succeed with the Defense Department’s similar agency, so let’s put North Texas’ best and brightest minds in biotech research to work solving our health care problems.”
North Texas not only has the space to house such a massive undertaking, but the people to support it, as well. Students in the area completed nearly 53,000 science, technology, engineering and math-related degrees in 2020, the coalition reported. In 2019, Nature Index, a database for research articles, ranked UT Southwestern among the top 25 institutions in biomedical sciences in the world.
The argument for ARPA-H to come to Texas over other well-established research and biotech homes like Silicon Valley or North Carolina’s Research Triangle is further bolstered by the state’s financial commitment to high-risk research, the coalition said.
Texans voted to create a bond fund committed to cancer research, leading to the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas in 2007. The institute uses its $6 billion in funding to award quarterly grants to Texas universities, scientists and companies in several categories. It represents the largest state cancer research investment in U.S. history.
CPRIT’s CEO Wayne Roberts serves as one of the leaders of the coalition to bring ARPA-H to Texas, as are executives from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and the University of Texas System.
The coalition’s rapid and coordinated proposal is perhaps aided by its leaders’ experience in successfully pitching Texas as the site for a different federal science project a decade ago. A similar cohort of science advocates helped land a national biosecurity center at Texas A&M University for the development of drugs to fight bioterrorism threats and infectious diseases.
“We organized a broad coalition of people around the state to communicate that we are ready, willing and able to work with this administration to meet the health needs of our nation. And that’s exactly what we’re saying here,” Graham said. “We are ready, willing and able to work together to meet the science and bioscience needs of our nation and the world.”
