Eli Lilly to turn former GE Fort Point site into genetic research center

Andrew C. Adams, Lilly’s vice president of genetic medicine who will be co-director of the new institute, said it will focus on developing RNA-based medicines, gene therapies, and other treatments that address the root cause of diseases. RNA drugs use ribonucleic acid to turn genes on and off in the treatment of disease. Gene therapies replace defective genes with healthy ones to help fight illnesses.

“Boston is probably the world’s center as far as RNA and DNA research goes,” Adams said. “Now is likely the right time for Lilly to invest here to capture that talent.”

The region has long been touted as among the world’s most attractive life science hubs, with the Seaport neighborhood rapidly becoming the region’s second-largest cluster of labs behind Kendall Square.

Record-breaking investment from venture capital and other sources into the life sciences industry has fueled a near-ceaseless demand for lab space to house biotech companies, a trend that grew throughout the pandemic. About 9.4 million square feet of life science space is under construction in Greater Boston, with another 52.3 million proposed, according to research from brokerage Colliers International. Boston’s office market, comparatively, has just over 3.1 million square feet under construction, with an additional 1.4 million square feet under construction in Cambridge, Colliers data show.

Adams said Lilly went through a “rigorous process” when searching for a home for the genetic medicine institute. The Seaport property now puts the company in close proximity to both talent and potential collaborators, Adams said.

“A lot of the type of companies Lilly wants to work with as partners are really expanding in that Seaport area,” he said.

Lilly has made several forays into genetic medicine in recent years. In December, it spent $380 million to form a partnership with Foghorn Therapeutics, a Cambridge biotech focused on genetic treatments for cancer. In 2020, Lilly spent about $1 billion on the New York City gene therapy firm Prevail Therapeutics.

And in 2018, it paid Lexington-based Dicerna Pharmaceuticals $100 million and invested another $100 million in the company’s research and development. Dicerna was working on medicines that rely on RNA interference, a Nobel Prize-winning technology that drug makers hope to use to turn off disease-causing genes. Dicerna is now owned by Danish drug firm Norvo Nordisk, which acquired it in December for $3.3 billion.

In tandem with its latest plans in Massachusetts, Lilly expects to expand the New York City headquarters of Prevail, which has become a hub for gene therapy research, to employ about 200 scientists.

With 250 employees in Massachusetts, Lilly would not be among the top 20 biopharma employers in the state by head count. The biggest is Takeda Pharmaceutical, which is based in Japan and has 6,750 workers, according to a 2021 report by the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council trade group. The 20th-biggest is AstraZeneca, the British-Swedish company,…