2025 Life Science Industry Report

Watertown is a bright spot during a turbulent time for the industry

Watertown’s life science industry has grown rapidly over the last decade, and is now consistently the third largest among municipalities in Massachusetts, behind only Boston and Cambridge. We at Watertown Bio have produced an industry report that first time characterizes Watertown’s life science industry, including the industry’s economic impact, drug discovery pipeline, community makeup, funding environment, major deals, and real estate inventory. Some key highlights from 2025 include:

• There are 78 MassBio member firms in Watertown, the 3rd most among cities and towns in MA behind Boston and Cambridge. We counted 101 total firms as of December 2025

• Employment dipped from 2024 to the first half of 2025, while the number of firms headquartered in Watertown increased modestly.

• After a record-breaking VC year in 2024, funding returned closer to the levels seen in 2022 and 2023. Watertown ranked 4th among cities and towns in MA for VC funding, behind Boston, Cambridge, and Waltham.

• Watertownʼs drug pipeline closely mirrors Massachusettsʼ, with particular specialties in immunomodulators and sensory organs.

• Watertown had the highest 2025 absorption in the region according to CBRE, but availability remained elevated at 45%. Watertown maintains its fundamental affordability advantage, with Q4 asking rents at a 22.5% discount to East Cambridge, a 15.1% discount to our neighbors in Allston, and only a 10% premium over Waltham and Lexington.

• The life science industry continues to drive benefits in the community through property taxes to fund new schools, new parks, and municipal improvements, while maintaining the 2nd lowest residential property tax burden in the metro area.

While the life science industry continues to battle headwinds, Watertown strong fundamentals allowed us to weather a turbulent 2025 and start 2026 strong by adding new firms and posting strong fund raising numbers. There’s a reason the Globe and Boston Business Journal keep about Watertown’s life science community.

We would like to thank Watertown City Council President Mark Sideris, Jay R. Luly, PhD, and Phillip Borden for sharing their insights in the report as well as Merle Kummer and Doug Orifice for their invaluable feedback and review. We also want to thank our community partners: the Watertown Business Coalition and the Charles River Regional Chamber, as well as our Laboratory Sponsor: Life Science at Arsenal Yards for making this report possible. If you find this report informative, support our work.

Quick Updates

Clinical Trial Headlines

• Kymera Therapeutics dosed their first patient in their BREADTH Phase2b trial of KT-621, a STAT6 degrader in development to treat eosinophilic asthma. The trial complements their BROADEN Phase 2b trial of KT-621 for atopic dermatitis which dosed its first patient in November 2025. The BREADTH trial is anticipated to finish in late 2027.

Presentations

• Seismic Therapeutic Founder, President, and CEO Jo Viney, PhD will be presenting work on AI/ML for immunology drug discovery at the Keystone Symposium – Antibodies as Drugs: Engineering and Computational Tools Enabling Clinical Advances on 2/3.

• Foghorn Therapeutics Head of Protein Biochemistry and Structural Biology, Yunji Davenport, will be presenting work on the structure of a transcription factor-BAF complex at the Structure-Based Drug Design Conference on 2/3.

That’s all for this week. Enjoy the Super Bowl and keep Watertown’s own Nano Diagnostics in mind. They are working to develop a simple blood test to detect CTE and other traumatic brain injuries.

Sam