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.

Sanofi expects its RSV antibody jointly developed with AstraZeneca will be available next season, executive VP of vaccines Thomas Triomphe announced on the company’s quarterly call.

Beyfortus, also known as nirsevimab, was approved in the EU back in November and is currently under FDA review with an expected decision coming in the third quarter of this year. The news comes as the FDA plans to hold advisory committee meetings over the next couple months to review RSV vaccines from Pfizer and GSK.

After a whopping $4 billion asset buy from Nimbus Therapeutics, along with a $400 million deal with Hutchmed for a colorectal cancer drug, Takeda executives touted pipeline optimism on its latest earnings call this week.

That’s because the TYK2 inhibitor for psoriasis Takeda is getting from Nimbus, along with the Hutchmed fruquintinib commercialization outside of China, are just two of what it reports are 10 late-stage development programs of promising candidates.

Regeneron faced a substantial slump in overall revenue last year, but the focus still remains on some of its biggest blockbusters.

The pharma with several high-profile partnerships — Sanofi and Bayer among them — said Friday that Q4 revenue was down 31% for the quarter, and down 24% for the entire year. However, that won’t stop blockbuster expansion plans.

One of those is Eylea, the Bayer-partnered eye disease drug that has been in major competition with Roche’s Vabysmo. While Eylea is currently only approved in a 2 mg dose, the company recently filed for approval to give a 8 mg dose, in hopes of making a longer-lasting treatment.

Following a promise last year to go “big and fast in breast cancer,” Gilead has secured a win for Trodelvy in the most common form.

The drug was approved to treat HR-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer patients who’ve already received endocrine-based therapy and at least two other systemic therapies for metastatic cancer, Gilead announced on Friday.

Trodelvy won its first indication in metastatic triple-negative breast cancer back in 2020, and has since added urothelial cancer to the list. HR-positive HER2-negative breast cancer accounts for roughly 70% of new breast cancer cases worldwide per year, according to senior VP of oncology clinical development Bill Grossman, and many patients develop resistance to endocrine-based therapies or worsen on chemotherapy.