Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his pediatrician wife, Priscilla Chan, are investing $250 million in a new biotech hub in Chicago, boosting the city’s effort to become a top U.S. life science cluster.
The couple’s Chan Zuckerberg Initiative announced plans on Thursday for its second such hub, following one that was launched in San Francisco in 2021.
The Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Chicago is a collaboration between the University of Chicago, Northwestern University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Its purpose will be to develop new technologies for studying and measuring human biology, according to a statement announcing the initiative.
Further understanding inflammation and overactive immune cells could lead to breakthroughs in combating diseases such as cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer’s disease, the statement said.
“This institute will embark on science to embed miniaturized sensors into tissues that will allow us to understand how healthy and diseased tissues function in unprecedented detail,” Chan said in the statement. “This might feel like science fiction today, but we think it’s realistic to achieve huge progress in the next 10 years.”
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker is committing $25 million in state funding to the project.
The announcement comes as Chicago looks to join the ranks of major research clusters, such as those already found in and around cities such as Boston and San Francisco.
Given its top universities, central location, large population and room to grow on its big development sites, Chicago leaders believe the area can improve its standing and become a leading hub in the sector.
The Chicago initiative will be led by Northwestern professor Shana Kelley. In the statement, she described the hub’s research goals as “wildly, but not impossibly, ambitious.”
There will be 30 to 50 employees in the hub in a yet-to-be-determined location, a Chan Zuckerberg Initiative spokeswoman said in an email to CoStar News. It will be within a dedicated space “in an area of the city that is considered a hub for innovation in the life sciences,” she said.
The Chicago team emerged from 58 proposals the initiative received, which was narrowed down to eight contenders and eventually three finalists, she said, declining to name the other cities that were in the running.
“The powerful collaborative model of the San Francisco Biohub has shown us that cross-disciplinary science leads to breakthroughs, and this integrated research model is a key part of how we’ll move towards curing, preventing, or managing all disease by the end of the century,” Zuckerberg said in the statement.
Real Estate Projects
There are several big real estate investors focused on attracting life sciences labs and offices in Chicago, but no clear center of gravity has emerged in the city.
Most recently, developers Trammell Crow and Beacon Capital Partners began construction of Hyde Park Labs, a 302,388-square-foot life science building at 52nd and Harper avenues on the city’s South Side near the University of Chicago.
Trammell Crow has already been developing life sciences buildings in Chicago’s fast-growing Fulton Market district, including its 1375 W. Fulton property that late last year landed the big expansion of Xeris Biopharma Holdings’ headquarters space.
That expansion, which could reach 87,032 square feet, is a consolidation of a headquarters from a Loop building and a smaller space Xeris already had in the Fulton Market building.
Chicago developer Sterling Bay wants to make life science companies a major part of its $6 billion Lincoln Yards mixed-use megadevelopment on the city’s North Side, which it began building in late 2021 on 55 acres along the Chicago River.
Another massive development set to break ground in Chicago, the $7 billion Bronzeville Lakefront mixed-use project south of the Loop business district also has a focus on life science space. The project on the former Michael Reese Hospital site near McCormick Place is designed to include a 500,000-square-foot innovation center anchored by Chicago ARC, a life science accelerator to be developed in partnership with Israel’s Sheba Medical Center and economic development firm Kaleidoscope Health Ventures.
Although Chicago is in the early stages of trying to establish itself as a rising life science cluster, the city’s northern suburbs already are home to major drugmakers and medical products companies. That includes Abbott, which last year leased more than 100,000 square feet in Chicago’s tallest skyscraper, Willis Tower, to create an office in the city.