Former biopharma employees get energized about clean technology

If you’ve been wondering what the hot new hangout for biopharmaceutical researchers is (and face it, who hasn’t?), here’s the scoop: According to BusinessWeek, scientists and executives are fleeing the biopharma industry for the trendier environs of “clean technology” — the catchall term for efforts to create products and processes that are less toxic and wasteful and more environmentally friendly. It includes efforts at green construction, as well as alternative energies such as water, wind, solar, and biofuel.

As venture funding of biotech companies has (maybe) reached its peak, clean technology seems to be taking its place, receiving $1.6 billion in venture funding in the first half of 2008. Federal and state governments are another big source of funding for clean tech companies: Biofuel developers Novozymes and Mascoma both received multi-million dollar grants just this week. And as biopharmaceutical companies lay off their researchers and other workers, those employees are “following the money” to clean technology firms.

Some similarities between the two sectors make that transition possible. On the management side, clean tech companies benefit from the experience of biopharma executives, who have dealt with the same challenges of long-term R&D cycles and the need for finding investors willing to finance often risky projects. On the scientific side, researchers at many clean tech firms are using the same biotech research techniques used by drug companies to investigate the workings of human and animal cells, but they’re transferring those methods to plant cells and other materials used in alternative energy research.

And so biopharma’s loss is clean technology’s gain. It remains to be seen, I suppose, what kind of effect the brain drain might have on biopharmaceutical development. But, in these days of high gas prices and ominous climate change, alternative energies might be just as welcome as the next miracle drug.