Vacaville shown on Google Maps
Vacaville, Calif. is home to a burgeoning biotech hub.
And there’s more to Vacaville’s biomanufacturing industry than Genentech’s presence there. “Genentech is just one of the biotech companies to open in Vacaville,” said Don Burrus, the city’s director of economic development services. “We’ve had biomanufacturers here for almost 30 years.”
Genentech set up shop in the city, located 35 miles southeast of Sacramento, in the late 1990s. The company acquired land in the city in 1994.
More recently, Lexington, Mass.–based Agenus purchased 120 acres in the city.
When Burrus began working for the city in June 2020, he collaborated with economists and other economic development experts to analyze the city’s economic drivers.
“We were able to determine that biomanufacturing and advanced manufacturing were big economic drivers,” Burrus said.
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