Massachusetts Sees Life Sciences Industry Growth

Massachusetts has spent over $300 million in the last four years to boost the life sciences industry with administration officials insisting the initiative has been a great success.  WAMC’s Paul Tuthill reports.

           Patrick administration officials say the life sciences initiative has so far lured dozens of new companies to the state, and led existing ones to expand.   Brian Jamele of the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center says the public money that was spent leveraged almost $1 billion in private investment.

            Job growth in life sciences has not been as explosive as backers of the initiative touted four years ago and most of the estimated four thousand permanent jobs created were  highly skilled  research positions. State officials say more manufacturing jobs remains a goal.