Written Testimony of Vincent J. Wong, JD, MBA, CEO and President of BioCrossroads and Crossroads Health Ventures, U.S. Senate

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Written testimony of Vincent J. Wong, CEO and President of BioCrossroads and Crossroads Health Ventures, before the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship at the April 7, 2026 hearing Fueling Innovation: The Role of Small Businesses in America's Bioeconomy. It describes Catalyze Indiana, an initiative to make Indiana a national hub for Advanced Chemistry manufacturing, and a Catalyst Scholars Fund supported by a $69.4 million grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. to recruit 25-45 faculty over five years. It states Indiana's Advanced Chemistry ecosystem generates over $43 billion in annual revenue and names four technology focus areas. It identifies limited venture capital for bioscience startups outside Massachusetts, California and New York as a gap and asks for federal support for access to capital.

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               WRITTEN TESTIMONY OF
             VINCENT J. WONG, JD, MBA
CEO AND PRESIDENT OF BIOCROSSROADS AND CROSSROADS
                 HEALTH VENTURES
BEFORE THE U.S. SENATE COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS
              AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP
  Hearing on Fueling Innovation: The Role of Small Businesses in America’s Bioeconomy
                                             APRIL 7, 2026



SENATOR YOUNG, DISTINGUISHED MEMBERS OF THE COMMITTEE AND GUESTS,
Thank you for the opportunity to testify on the efforts in Indiana to create the foundation for
formation of startups to support America’s bioeconomy. In response to the clarion call to accelerate
reshoring of biomanufacturing, Catalyze Indiana is an initiative to establish Indiana as the national
hub for Advanced Chemistry manufacturing and innovation. Building on Indiana's unique strengths—
including global industry leaders like Eli Lilly, Elanco, and Corteva, world-class research universities,
and the nation's highest concentration of manufacturing jobs—this initiative addresses critical gaps in
domestic supply chain resilience for food and medicine production. The initiative has been shaped via
extensive stakeholder engagement over six months with industry CEOs and university leaders. CICP
is presently developing a detailed funding proposal for implementation of Catalyze Indiana's
foundational programs.
        Catalyze Indiana aims to position Indiana as the default destination for invention,
        development and implementation of next generation technologies to enable the
        reshoring of manufacturing of the supply chains for medicine and foods.
Supported by a $69.4 million grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. to the CICP Foundation Inc. and
matching commitments from participating universities, the Catalyst Scholars Fund, spearheaded by
CICP and powered by its branded initiatives, BioCrossroads and AgriNovus Indiana, will enable these
Indiana higher education institutions to recruit 25-45 world-class faculty and their teams over five
years to tackle industry informed grand challenges in key platform technology areas. Successfully
implemented, this Catalyze Indiana phase will position Indiana at the forefront of national efforts to
bring Advanced Chemistry manufacturing to the United States to secure the nation’s supply of food
and medicine. This catalytic investment will establish Indiana as a destination for top research and
workforce talent; as a magnet for industry manufacturing investments; and as an engine for innovation
in horizontal production technologies to ensure American leadership in Advanced Chemistry
manufacturing across a wide range of sectors.
It is the full expectation that many of the faculty recruited through the Catalyst Scholars Fund, will
serve as scientific and technical founders of startups further developing and ultimately
commercializing the Scholars’ technology and inventions to ensure that their research has real-world
impact. BioCrossroads, amongst a spectrum of partners in Indiana’s innovation ecosystem, have
developed and deliver a portfolio of programming and initiatives to inspire and support startup

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founders in their respective journeys to develop and commercialize impactful technologies and
inventions. A critical gap that continues to exist is the lack of venture capital funding for bioscience
startups in regions such as Indiana. Despite having promising discovery and inventions born in
Indiana, the overwhelming concentration of necessary capital to fuel their development and growth is
found in Massachusetts, California and New York. The federal government can play a role to facilitate
the broader dispersion and increased access of venture capital to communities such as Indiana, which
are hotbeds for innovation vital to the national security.

II. INTRODUCTION
Amid uncertainty and vulnerability, Advanced Chemistry supply chains dictating the nation’s supply
of food and medicine have emerged among business leaders and policymakers as an exigent priority
for creation of resilient domestic manufacturing capabilities in Advanced Chemistry. Indiana is
uniquely positioned to establish and act on a national ambition to secure critical U.S. food and
medicine supply chains. Indiana’s nation-leading research universities and institutes and strong life
science industry presence—with global industry leading corporations spanning human health, animal
health and plant science-- make the State a natural home for efforts in this space. Via investment in
new programming and infrastructure alongside strong coordination of robust existing efforts, Indiana
can cement and grow its national leadership in Advanced Chemistry clusters while addressing gaps in
national security and domestic economic resilience through the expansion and innovation-enhanced,
technology-driven advancement of domestic supply chains for critical goods.
Overview of existing assets and opportunities
Indiana possesses exceptional foundational assets positioned to address this national challenge. The
state's Advanced Chemistry ecosystem generates over $43 billion in annual revenue and employs
nearly 40,000 Hoosiers across leading companies including Eli Lilly and Company, Elanco Animal
Health, Corteva Agriscience, and others. Indiana ranks as a top-five performer nationally in
pharmaceutical manufacturing and maintains strong positions across agrochemicals, advanced
materials, and emerging sectors like sustainable chemistry. These industry stakeholders not only
position the State as a national leader; they represent globally recognized brands that symbolize leading
innovation in pharmaceuticals, animal health, and agriculture. Their leaders are naturally positioned as
thought leaders in business and policy matters related to their respective fields.
Adding to Indiana’s prowess in human, plant, and animal health is its unique strength as a
manufacturing powerhouse. BLS data show that Indiana has the highest intensity of manufacturing
jobs of any U.S. state with a location quotient of 2.04, indicating a concentration double the national
average. Manufacturing accounts for 19.8% of Indiana’s jobs, employing over 540,000 people. This
historical strength in manufacturing is in large part what has enabled Indiana to maintain and grow its
manufacturing presence among major pharmaceutical, agricultural, and specialty chemical producers,
even as research and development sites have proliferated elsewhere. Like the U.S., the size of Indiana’s
manufacturing employment base is diminishing year-on-year; However, Indiana is best poised among
any U.S. state to lead the return of national manufacturing capacity.
Leading Indiana institutions of higher education, Indiana University, Purdue University, the University
of Notre Dame, and Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, bring world-class capabilities in chemical
biology, synthetic biology, analytical chemistry, and biomanufacturing. Purdue's William D. Young

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Institute for Advanced Manufacturing of Pharmaceuticals represents a center of excellence for next-
generation pharmaceutical production, and Purdue’s analytical chemistry is the nation’s top graduate
program. IU is deeply engaged in Advanced Chemistry initiatives like IU LAB and its significant $250
million investment in life sciences. The Notre Dame-led Center for Bioanalytical Metrology promote
strong industry-academic partnerships. These institutions collectively produce over 4,000 chemistry
graduates annually and maintain research portfolios generating significant patent activity and
commercialization outcomes. Rose-Hulman, with its primary focus on education and training, has
pioneered an innovative model for faculty work experience that has not only enhanced job-relevant
education, but has also led to invaluable workforce and talent pipelines to top Indiana employers. For
example, its enablement of faculty sabbaticals to key State industry employers has enhanced the job
relevance of education, while simultaneously creating strong network connections that have promoted
retention of student talent in Indiana.
However, academic and industry stakeholders have emphasized both tremendous opportunity and
clear challenges. Universities and industry organizations have expressed strong receptiveness to
coordinated Advanced Chemistry efforts, while noting that current activities remain fragmented across
institutions and lack critical infrastructure and scale. Industry partners have likewise noted limited
engagement with Indiana-based research institutions despite strong desire for deeper collaboration in
academic-industry peer research collaborations, faculty attraction, student retention, and innovation
partnerships. Similarly, universities have identified numerous opportunities, many unrealized until
now, to deepen their respective industry collaborations and formalize their participation in business
attraction and supply chain development efforts.
A national “whitespace” for action
While federal place-based investment efforts to-date have focused on other hot-button priorities such
as semiconductor and chip manufacturing, policy focus on Advanced Chemistry has been
comparatively under-developed despite its importance. Recent publications from Indiana leaders,
including Lilly CEO Dave Ricks’ Business Roundtable study on critical supply chains and Senator Todd
Young’s National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology report, have drawn attention to
the critically needed onshoring and technological enhancement of global Advanced Chemistry supply
chains to secure U.S. economic resilience and assure national security. A lack of both focused federal
efforts or any competing efforts by other U.S. states in this space, coupled with Indiana’s unique ability
to lead come together in this moment to position the State as an obvious epicenter for renewed and
ambitious efforts within the U.S.
Enabling American leadership in Advanced Chemistry manufacturing
Where the U.S. is a long-standing incumbent leader in the Advanced Chemistry manufacturing value
chain, America’s levels of production and economic profile in the space have undoubtedly declined
over the last three decades. According to former FDA Principal Deputy Commissioner Janet
Woodcock, “as of August 2019, only 28 percent of the manufacturing facilities making APIs to supply
the U.S. market were in our country." Similarly, sector experts like the Atlantic Council and the U.S.
Pharmacopeia Medicines Supply Chain Map have documented acute challenges due to reliance on
external countries, particularly those without strong U.S. geopolitical alliances. China is now the fourth
largest pharmaceutical importer to the U.S. after Ireland, Germany, and Switzerland.


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However, multiple challenges must be addressed in order for the US to reshore both precursor
chemicals and active pharmaceutical ingredients. Production economics fundamentally disadvantage
domestic manufacturing, with U.S. labor, energy, and compliance costs far exceeding those in India
and China—disparities particularly acute in commoditized generic APIs where razor-thin margins
cannot support price premiums and low-capacity utilization drives costs to be prohibitive. Capital
requirements compound these challenges, as GMP-compliant facilities demand hundreds of millions
in upfront investment plus technological upgrades from batch to continuous flow processing that
Asian competitors have already scaled. The U.S. also sees regulatory barriers create multi-year
permitting timelines due to EPA hazardous waste requirements and community opposition. Major
incumbent supplier countries have spent more time building the pipeline of chemical engineers,
process chemists, and other operations talent that the U.S. must expand. Finally, onshoring requires
coordination action across the manufacturing value chain; reshoring API production without the
entire supply chain—from basic chemicals through excipients—merely shifts vulnerability upstream
while risking retaliatory disruptions from China or India that could compromise other pharmaceutical
supplies.
Catalyze Indiana must address technology, human capital, and infrastructure challenges that – because
unaddressed to date – have previously diminished the business case for undertaking manufacturing of
complex chemicals in the United States. This involves development of new innovations that enhance
efficiency, mitigate waste, and support agile production; workforce training to ensure that Indiana
students are prepared to engage in future Advanced Chemistry manufacturing; and supply chain
infrastructure that can incentivize in-State production. Because of its capital- and labor-intensive
nature, Advanced Chemistry leadership is closely linked to efficiency, which is in turn linked to
advances in technology platforms that enhance productivity.
Industry leaders have reflected that restoring national leadership in Advanced Chemistry will require
continual innovation in production technologies and processes. Efforts to bring manufacturing
onshore cannot rely on traditional processes or technologies alone. Rather, they must be crafted to
scale transformative innovation that can subvert the economic model that has drawn manufacturing
to low-cost countries and that anticipate disruptive trends such as artificial intelligence. Necessarily,
Catalyze Indiana should prepare Indiana’s workforce and industry to lead the next generation of agile
and efficient manufacturing in the U.S.
Long-promised paradigm shifts to advanced and continuous manufacturing could vastly enhance the
operational and material efficiency of manufacturing but have not yet arrived at scale. Investment in
deployment of technology platforms aligned to industry-informed “grand challenges” can create
opportunities across clusters involved in Advanced Chemistry manufacturing, including
pharmaceuticals, agriculture, advanced polymers, and energy storage. While Catalyze Indiana focuses
primarily on food and medicine, its focus technology platform areas will enable expansion of
Advanced Chemistry manufacturing across sectors.
Technology areas for Catalyze Indiana were driven by an analysis of existing grants and patents,
broader innovation trends, and industry needs. The four focus areas of technology are: (1)
Automation; (2) Analytical chemistry; (3) New macromolecular chemistries, including those enabling
waste mitigation; and (4) Artificial intelligence and computation.


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III. Envisioning Catalyze Indiana
Catalyze Indiana seeks to establish Indiana as the default destination for the expansion and
innovative technology advancement of Advanced Chemistry manufacturing in the U.S. As
policymakers and business leaders seek to enhance the domestic supply chain to secure the nation’s
supply of food and medicine, Indiana is uniquely positioned to serve as a global model for rapid and
agile Advanced Chemistry production and related scientific and technology innovation at the scale
necessary to meet the nation’s growing demand for increasingly complex and biologically inspired
molecules. This effort seeks to coordinate and scale Indiana’s existing assets – its three R1 research
institutions with high degrees of specialization in chemistry and chemical engineering, Rose-Hulman
Institute, a unique engineering school with a history of collaborative industry partnerships, Indiana’s
Fortune 500 companies who serve as leaders in Advanced Chemistry clusters, and its storied track
record of manufacturing and production. If successfully implemented, Indiana will be a go-to hub for
talent seeking abundant workforce opportunities; for innovators seeking to bring new technologies to
market; and for industry seeking to expand and technologically advance their domestic manufacturing
operations. Building out this vision at meaningful scale will necessarily include all of the following:
    ● Enhancing Indiana’s ability to commercialize and advance innovation emanating from its
      leading universities and research institutions;
    ● Supporting attraction and retention of top faculty, student, and workforce talent; and
    ● Creating infrastructure to support critical U.S. policy and business priorities, including
      sustainability in Advanced Chemistry, efficiency of manufacturing, and global leadership in AI
      and biotechnology.
When fully and successfully implemented, Indiana will be home to the world’s top research talent in
Advanced Chemistry production and manufacturing technologies, such as biocatalysis, membrane
separations, and process analytical technologies. The State will also be a magnet destination for top
student and early-career talent seeking robust and competitive jobs in Advanced Chemistry fields.
Finally, anchored by these innovation and workforce efforts, Indiana will be a top candidate for any
company seeking to make substantial investments in onshore manufacturing across Advanced
Chemistry sectors, including biopharmaceuticals, agrisciences, advanced polymers, and energy storage.
Based on feedback from Indiana Advanced Chemistry stakeholders to the prior report and ongoing
interviews, the full potential Catalyze Indiana program should span four strategic pillars of interrelated
activity: would
        (1) Developing, attracting, and retaining talent to support research and workforce
        needs
        (2) Enabling innovation that supports technology grand challenges and industry needs
        (3) Establishing supply chain resilience through infrastructure, business readiness,
        and connectivity
        (4) Enhancing Indiana’s profile as a technology and policy leader in domestic
        Advanced Chemistry onshoring and growth

IV. CONCLUSION


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The imperative to secure America's supply chains for food and medicine has never been more urgent,
and Indiana stands uniquely positioned to lead this national mission by leading the country in
technological innovation, workforce development, and infrastructure creation. This initiative
establishes the foundation for Indiana to become the nation's hub for Advanced Chemistry
manufacturing and innovation.
If successfully implemented, Indiana will be home to the world’s top research talent in Advanced
Chemistry technologies; will be a magnet for top workforce talent seeking jobs and growth
opportunities; and will attract substantial private investment through companies seeking to build
onshore manufacturing facilities. In order for this vision to be fulfilled, it will be critically important
that sufficient capital can be attracted to support the resulting startups who will translate the promising
innovation into impact. Government support of enhanced access to capital outside the conventional
hubs of investment – Massachusetts, California, and New York – to the Heartland would be highly
enabling and welcomed.
I would like to acknowledge the contributions to the written testimony by Arrowpoint Labs and
collaborators at Eli Lilly & Co., Elanco Animal Health, Corteva Agriscience, Indiana University,
Purdue University, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, and University of Notre Dame.




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