Forty-nine million dollars of federal tax money is coming to Wisconsin for the regional technology hub that President Joe Biden announced last fall.
Specifically, the money will go toward five biohealth projects involving a fifteen-member public-private consortium that includes the Medical College of Wisconsin, the Milwaukee Area Technical College, Rockwell Automation, GE HealthCare, the M7 economic development partnership, Employ Milwaukee, UW-Madison and the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, among others.
Lisa Johnson heads the non-profit trade association BioForward Wisconsin. She says some of the money will help additional development of what’s called personalized medicine.
“There’s all types of pathways of treating, let’s say, cancer or diseases, where it could be cell and gene therapy, based on the genetic profile. Maybe that’s the best approach. The theranostics, where you’re combining the therapy and diagnostics with imaging, more targeted approaches. We have key companies in this state –they’re called radiotherapies, that deliver very targeted treatments to a patient," Johnson says.
Missy Hughes, Secretary and CEO of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, says the federal money is expected to pay big dividends in the state.
“The economic impact is estimated to be somewhere in the realm of nine billion dollars over the next ten years. We’re looking at adding about 30,000 direct jobs, 110,000 indirect jobs. That’s on top of the 52,000 people who already work in this industry. We’re looking at jobs that will have an average wage of $96,000, which is 70 percent higher than the statewide average," Hughes says.
U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) says the Wisconsin tech hub is one of 12 around the U.S. selected for this round of funding. The money comes from the CHIPS and Science Act that Baldwin supported as a way for the U.S. biotech industry to better compete globally.
Baldwin and Biden are in the midst of reelection bids this year.
