About LifeSci NYC

Why LifeSci NYC?

The LifeSci NYC initiative includes three key areas: talent, funding, and space.

LifeSci NYC sparks innovation, culture, and talent by stimulating investment and partnership with key stakeholders to bring equity and opportunity to all New Yorkers.

With guidance from the LifeSci NYC Advisory Council, NYCEDC will play a leading role in unlocking the city’s life sciences potential.

Establishing NYC as a Global Leader in Life Sciences

In 2016, New York City created LifeSci NYC, an ambitious $1.1 billion commitment to establish New York City as a global leader in life sciences.

As a result of these and other investments, NYC has grown its life sciences industry to almost 20,000 jobs, over 500 R&D stage companies, and 3.5 million square feet of commercial life sciences space as of March 2024.

NYC: Global Center of Gravity for Technology

In addition to its strengths in life sciences, NYC is home to the world’s second-largest tech ecosystem, with over 25,000 startups and a workforce of 355,000 throughout the tech ecosystem. Locally, this sector has grown by 176 percent since 2012 and continues to create next-generation, scalable solutions with applications such as AI/ML, blockchain, robotics, quantum computing, and cybersecurity that intersect and support the life sciences, green economy, and creative industries like fashion and entertainment.

NYC’s leadership in tech is evidenced by the fact that the metro area is home to the second-largest AI workforce in the country with over 40,000 workers with AI and AI-adjacent skills and $21.4 billion in venture capital funding directed toward NYC AI companies over just the past five years.

Next Frontier: Life Sciences + Advanced Technology

Building on New York’s foundations in life science and technology, NYC is now poised to lead in research, discovery, and commercialization in sectors where the two fields combine. Projects that illustrate this approach include:

• CZ Biohub New York in collaboration with Columbia, Rockefeller, and Yale, harnessing the immune system and bringing novel diagnostics and therapeutics to patients in need.
• Mount Sinai Medical Center and Regeneron Genetics Center collaboration to sequence genomes of one million racially and ethnically diverse patients to advance precision medicine research and improve patient care.
• Pfizer’s use of AI/ML for higher efficiency of drug screening and customized trial identification.
• Columbia University’s National Science Foundation grant to create the Institute for Artificial and Natural Intelligence dedicated to advance AI research of the brain.
• Center for Engineering and Precision Medicine by Mount Sinai and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, driving research at the interface of engineering and medicine.
• Lab of the Future, an AI/ML/robotic-driven pilot lab to make the drug discovery process faster, more data-driven, and cost effective, with support from Empire State Development.

These and other projects demonstrate the potential of interdisciplinary approaches to research and the momentum in New York City. NYC institutions are conducting the next wave of research; talent and funding are here and continue to migrate to NYC; and the City and State continue to heavily invest to create clusters, grow talent, and build the infrastructure needed to drive industry leadership.

The NYC Life Sciences Talent Pipeline

With a workforce of 4M+, NYC is home to the nation’s largest, most diverse, and most skilled talent pool—including the world’s largest concentration of Nobel laureates; 7,000+ graduate students and postdocs; and 500,000 healthcare workers, more than any other city in the nation.

In fact, as showcased in Life Sciences in the NYC Metro, a joint report released by the Department of City Planning and NYCEDC, by many measures the NYC metro area has the largest life sciences economy in the country, leading all other metro areas in the amount of NIH funding and the number of R&D scientists, healthcare workers, life sciences companies, and graduate students.

NYCEDC is committed to nurturing and growing that talent through workforce development initiatives like the LifeSci NYC Internship Program, which prepares a diverse group of students for careers in the field—and builds a direct talent pipeline for the life sciences industry. To date, nearly 950 interns across over 220 host companies have participated in the program, with over 40 percent of those internships either extended or transformed into a full-time role. Get an overview of the types of jobs that are available within the life sciences ecosystem.

Early Investments Delivered Crucial Lab Capacity

LifeSci NYC has successfully laid the foundational investments for New York to realize the development of over 3.5 million square feet of lab capable space to date. This infrastructure historically centered on the creation of highly technical “wet” laboratories to support therapeutic research and development. Building on these successful investments, which include Deerfield’s CURE, King Street’s Innolabs, and BioLABS @ NYULangone, LifeSci NYC is now well positioned to support a broader suite of space typologies necessary to accommodate a rapidly evolving ecosystem of science and technology.

Beyond the Bench: Building for the Future of Life Sciences in NYC

Currently, the health and life sciences are undergoing profound transformations, driven by the convergence of artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) and precision medicine. From early discovery of new drug targets to advancement of later-stage clinical trials, New York’s research and development is generating real-world patient benefits and real-world evidence needed to support emerging tech like AI/ML.

The City is also investing heavily in the sustainable bioeconomy. This emerging deeptech sector leverages 21st-century innovations in biology, engineering, chemistry, and AI to create novel climate and sustainability solutions across materials, food, agriculture, home, medical and personal care, energy, and the environment.

To support these evolutions and to create resilient infrastructure to accommodate the future of innovation in New York, NYCEDC sees new opportunities for modular, flexible environments to drive innovation that may include:

• “Dry” laboratories and other office space related to life sciences innovation, including space which supports AI/ML and data sciences research, digital health, medtech, the sustainable bioeconomy, applied science, physical science, bioinformatics, or other related applications. Such spaces could potentially support development of software, electronic tools, or physical devices
• Clinical research spaces operated by nonprofit institutions, clinical research organizations (CRO), or other entities with a focus on supporting clinical trials and the collection of real-world data to inform new discoveries
• Materials innovation laboratories supporting regenerative chemistry research and development for materials technologies
• Community-based facilities where New Yorkers can learn, train, and ultimately contribute their talents to New York’s life sciences economy
• “Graduation” labs for early-stage companies who are growing out of shared incubator space and need a small footprint of dedicated, private working spaces potentially in combination with shared amenities like freezers and autoclaves
• Imaging infrastructure to enable high-resolution visualization and quantitative analysis of biological structures and processes, supporting discovery, drug development, and diagnostics.
• Automation and robotics necessary to support any of the above
• Sustainable lab design such as right-sized ventilation, flexible and adaptable layouts, and high efficiency systems to lower environmental impacts.

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