Seattle Times business columnist Jon Talton reports on the continued strength of Seattle’s bio sciences cluster this morning. Well, I put that a bit more strongly than he did.

Seattle was fortunate to have an established cluster, which was ranked No.  5 nationally in an influential 2004 report by the Milken Institute. How are we doing now? Hanging on, barely. A new report by Jones Lang LaSalle has Seattle as the nation’s tenth largest “established” bio cluster.

Granted, our position has slipped and policymakers should take note. But I wouldn’t minimize the continued success of the industry here.

Here’s  a table from the report showing the top-ranked cities. Ahead of Seattle are Boston, San Diego, San Francisco, Raleigh-Durham, Philadelphia, metro DC, greater New York, LA, and Minneapolis-St. Paul. I’ll borrow part of the quote from the article that Talton cited. It sums up the present situation well.

One of the distinguishing features of the Seattle-area life sciences market is that very little manufacturing is done in the region. Nearly all Puget Sound-area life sciences industry activities are based on research and development. Unlike areas with a strong concentration of life sciences manufacturing jobs, when a growing Puget Sound company is purchased by a larger company, the frequent trend has been the employees and the companies remain intact and local to Seattle.

Talton points out that the competition is intense and the governor has adopted a cluster strategy that should include life sciences. I’d add that support for R&D is particularly critical, as we emphasize in our recent policy brief, Leveling the Playing Field with Tax Preferences. The report focused on high tech credits and exemptions and the same thinking applies to biosciences.

For more on the importance of life sciences to our state, read our economic impact analysis, Trends in Washington’s Life-Science Industry 2007-2011.