Boston and San Fran­cis­co have long been es­tab­lished as the two biggest biotechs hubs in the na­tion, homes for R&D that has spread its ten­ta­cles through all lev­els of the in­dus­try. But as the space has grown, those two hubs have im­posed tighter bar­ri­ers to en­try — which means cities like Seat­tle could have a chance to build a hub of in­no­va­tion of their own.

The Seat­tle-Taco­ma-Belle­vue tri­an­gle is the fastest grow­ing area for life sci­ences em­ploy­ment, close­ly fol­lowed by the At­lanta area and the Or­lan­do-Kissim­mee-San­ford tri­an­gle, ac­cord­ing to a new re­port from JLL. The team com­pared em­ploy­ment rates in the in­dus­try be­tween the past five years and the five years pre­ced­ing that.

On that rat­ing, life sci­ence po­si­tions in the Seat­tle area grew at a 3.1% clip, com­pared with 3% for the At­lanta area and 2.9% for the Cen­tral Flori­da tri­an­gle. In terms of wage po­si­tion­ing — a met­ric com­par­ing rel­a­tive wages be­tween biotech hubs — the Seat­tle area ranked fourth just be­hind Los An­ge­les, the Twin Cities and the North Car­oli­na tri­an­gle of Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill.

The JLL re­port, ti­tled “Life Sci­ences Emerg­ing Mar­kets In­dex: Poised for a par­a­digm shift,” the team not on­ly looked at biotech hubs’ “mo­men­tum,” but al­so their wealth of avail­able tal­ent and “po­ten­tial” to at­tract a work­force.

“Though Boston, San Fran­cis­co, and San Diego will al­ways oc­cu­py a vault­ed place with­in the life sci­ences pan­theon, the in­cred­i­ble dy­namism of the in­dus­try is jump-start­ing new mar­kets that are of grow­ing in­ter­est to life sci­ences in­vestors and com­pa­nies alike thanks to their lifestyle, cost of liv­ing, and de­mo­graph­ic ad­van­tages,” JLL wrote.

In terms of to­tal STEM de­grees, the megac­i­ties ob­vi­ous­ly topped the list: New York City, Los An­ge­les, Chica­go and Wash­ing­ton, DC. Round­ing out the list there are the Hous­ton and Dal­las ar­eas, San Fran­cis­co, Boston, Toron­to and At­lanta.

The re­port al­so out­lined an in­dex for “po­ten­tial,” which it de­fined as a ma­trix of hous­ing avail­abil­i­ty, an ex­ist­ing mil­len­ni­al work­force, state cor­po­rate tax­es and high­er-ed­u­ca­tion R&D fund­ing. By that met­ric, the Char­lotte-Gas­to­nia-Con­cord tri­an­gle in North Car­oli­na nar­row­ly edged out the Seat­tle area. Just be­low those fron­trun­ners were the Den­ver-Au­ro­ra-Lake­wood area in Col­orado and the Austin, TX re­gion, in­clud­ing two cities along In­ter­state 35 — Round Rock and George­town. A cou­ple oth­er sur­pris­es on the top 10 po­ten­tial list were Boise, ID, and the greater Nashville area.

Part of what de­fined those ar­eas’ po­ten­tial were cor­po­rate tax rates, and on that front Wash­ing­ton and Texas came out on top. Both states boast a 0% cor­po­rate rate — on­ly North Car­oli­na comes close at 2.5%. Mean­while, Cal­i­for­nia, New York and Texas topped the list in terms of high­er-ed­u­ca­tion R&D spend­ing, a guide­post for IP pro­duc­tion and cor­po­rate fol­lowthrough, JLL said.

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There’s another unicorn in biotech land, as Benchling and its leading R&D cloud platform pull in a $200 million Series E to help scientists accelerate drug development. In doing so, the company hit a lofty $4 billion valuation — nearly five times what it was worth around this time last year, according to Forbes.

Despite the fact that drug development is becoming significantly more complex, the industry continues to run on paper, emails and spreadsheets, co-founder and CEO Sajith Wickramasekara said in a video on Benchling’s website. The MIT grad sought to change that by creating software that allows scientists to better track, model and forecast their work.

Novavax has had a busy month, filled with supply chain issues and manufacturing deals that have affected the rollout of its Covid-19 vaccine. Tuesday, the company announced updates to its leadership team.

CFO Greg Covino will step down from that role after just five months for personal reasons, the release said, but take on a new role as executive advisor. John Trizzino, current chief commercial officer and chief business officer, will take the CFO role over in the interim.

Amylyx is one of several companies looking to break through in the tough ALS field, and Wednesday they announced they’re moving forward with regulatory plans.

The Cambridge, MA-based biotech said they’re submitting a marketing application to the EMA for their AMX0035 program by the end of 2021. Wednesday’s news comes a few weeks after they revealed similar plans to move forward with Canadian health regulators by June 30.

The FDA and CDC have jointly decided to stop administering J&J’s Covid-19 vaccine after reviewing data involving six reported US cases of a rare and severe type of blood clot in individuals after receiving the vaccine.

CDC will convene a meeting of its Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices on Wednesday to further review these cases and assess their potential significance. “FDA will review that analysis as it also investigates these cases. Until that process is complete, we are recommending a pause in the use of this vaccine out of an abundance of caution,” Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research and Anne Schuchat, Principal Deputy Director of the CDC, said in a joint statement Tuesday morning.

The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on Tuesday upheld the Federal Trade Commission’s ruling that generic drugmaker Impax Laboratories should be charged with antitrust violations for accepting payments worth about $100 million to delay the entry of a generic opioid for more than two years.

The court’s opinion upheld the FTC’s anticompetitive findings on the deal between Impax (now owned by Amneal Pharmaceuticals) and Endo Pharmaceuticals, under which Endo committed to not market an authorized generic, which increased Impax’s projected profits by $24.5 million. Endo agreed to pay Impax credits for the shrunken market that Impax would inherit if, as expected, Endo made a successful hop to a reformulated Opana ER.