More than two decades after shifting his career focus toward the life science industry for the most personal of reasons, JLL Managing Director Bob Coughlin has a front-row seat to its rapid growth.

At the end of 2020, Coughlin joined Chicago-based JLL’s national life science team that now has more than 2,700 employees, including 360 brokers dedicated exclusively to that fast-growing real estate sector. He made the shift to find ways to help his son Bobby, who was born with cystic fibrosis, a genetic disorder that damages the lungs and digestive system.

Now, Bob Coughlin credits work done by life sciences companies — which create and manufacture new medicines, vaccines and medical devices — with helping save his son’s life.

“I learned how to work in this industry because I partnered with the CF Foundation raising money and investing in companies, while I was changing laws and statutes so that Massachusetts could have a better environment for these companies, because I didn’t want my kid to die,” Coughlin told CoStar News.

It’s been one medicine in particular, Vertex Pharmaceuticals’ Trikafta, that has made a big difference, Coughlin said. His son started taking the drug, which the Food and Drug Administration has called “a breakthrough therapy for cystic fibrosis,” in late 2019.

“He’s grown about 8 inches, gained 50 pounds, and his lung function is back to what it was when he was 5 years old,” Coughlin said of his son, who’s grown to 6-foot-3 and 200 pounds since taking Trikafta. “It’s remarkable how well he’s doing. I cry every time I think about it or talk about it.”

Medical advances such as the one that helped his son were what Bob Coughlin dreamed might be possible, but feared wouldn’t be, when he and his wife found out their third child would be born with cystic fibrosis.

Coughlin had quit his job and was running for a seat in Massachusetts’ House of Representatives when his unborn son was diagnosed. He considered dropping out of the race to focus on his family before a social worker at Boston Children’s Hospital convinced him that being in an elected position would give him a platform to help drive drug innovation, helping his son and other patients.

He later served as undersecretary of economic development for then-Gov. Deval Patrick, followed by about 14 years as the head of the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, a trade association and policy advocacy group.

For Coughlin, it’s a family business of sorts. His daughter Mary Kate, 25, is a nurse practitioner, “driven because she’s been taking care of her brother her whole life,” he said. Son Paul, 23, is a facilities engineer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, working out of a JLL-managed building, he said.

Bobby Coughlin attends UMass Boston and is also interested in a career in real estate development, Coughlin said.

Though Bobby Coughlin still has organ damage, and eventually will need a liver transplant, modern medicine has kept him out of the hospital — where he has spent several months of his life, cumulatively — throughout COVID-19, even after he contracted the omicron variant, Coughlin said of his son.

Those results, and hopes of eventual cures for several deadly diseases, drive Coughlin’s work to help developers create the best space possible and tenants find the optimal environment to advance their research.

He's part of a growing group of brokers who specialize in the life science industry, which gained prominence during the pandemic as companies developed vaccines as quickly as they could.

Since 2020, JLL has added 237 people to the practice to keep up with demand.

He's based in Boston, which for years has been at the epicenter of the biotech industry. Bob Coughlin said the nation's biggest life science real estate market will continue to grow in importance, especially as medical advances extend and save lives.

“People with lung diseases were so compromised going through COVID, and we’ve made it,” he said. “I don’t want to say it was a miracle because it wasn’t. It took billions of dollars and countless amazing people and science and all that, but it’s amazing to see.

“I don’t have nightmares anymore about my kid dying before me, and I did up until a couple years ago.”