Sacramento Takes Aim at Biotech

The Sacramento region's biotech industry is trying to beef up. UC-Davis boasts a new bioscience lab, deep-pocket private investors are attempting to spur commercialization of products, and economic development leaders are looking to boost marketing of the region as a biotech hub.

Roughly 85 businesses in the region are counted as part of the life-science and biotechnology sector, although economic development leaders are unclear about how accurate that count is or what kind of economic impact the industry has.

A national study last year by the Brookings Institution put the Sacramento-Yolo region in a class of biotech wannabes that have made modest gains attracting the much sought-after industry but lag well behind industry forerunners such as San Francisco and Boston. For example, the 341 biotech patents developed in the Sacramento-Yolo area between 1975 and 1999 were just 6 percent of those generated by the Bay Area.

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