Funding cuts delay life science efforts-WEB ONLY

They’d share research facilities and capabilities with each other and with bioscience companies that covet access to a mass spectrometer or the latest academic discovery ripe for commercialization.

The alliance also would create mass to pull down bigger federal and private research grants, and would expand medical and technical training.

Now, the equivalent of a biosciences moon shot may be in stasis for the next year or two. The $35 million sought by the alliance for each of the next two years was nowhere to be found when Gov. Mitch Daniels released his proposed budget Jan. 6.

While most every state is paring spending to survive the recession, a delay in the alliance would hit at a time when California, Massachusetts and other biotech behemoths are committing billions of dollars to strengthen already-formidable bioscience brain trusts.

“Indiana is not a big enough state or a wealthy enough state that we can have our two large research universities going it alone,” said William B. Stephan, vice president for engagement at IU.

Stephan and his peers from Purdue, with industry leaders in tow, say they still plan to make their pitch to legislators in coming weeks.

The additional funding would go for uses including new shared research facilities, additional matching funds to lure larger federal and foundation grants, and expanding programs offered by IU School of Medicine and Purdue University’s Healthcare Technical Assistance Program.

Daniels suggested the initiatives could rely on private funding.

But, warned Stephan: “It is not likely that we would capture an amount sufficient to realize the larger vision. Initiatives of this sort require a public investment to get started.”

Indiana bioscience leaders know well that some states are making large public investments in bioscience ranging from pharmaceuticals to medical devices, health care delivery and agri-business.

California over the last two years pledged $321 million for stem cell research facilities.

Florida, which in 2004 spent hundreds of millions of dollars to lure the prestigious Scripps Research Institute from California to Palm Beach County, now is spending $300 million in public money on research infrastructure.

Massachusetts has committed to $550 million in grants through 2012 for university life sciences infrastructure.

And in June, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick signed a bill allocating $1 billion in economic development incentives to biotech research companies.

“We have not really done that in Indiana,” said David Johnson, president and CEO of BioCrossroads, the primary life sciences trade group in Indiana. “Ours has not been a strategy of going to the Legislature saying, ‘We need a billion dollars.'”

That’s why the Indiana Innovation Alliance makes sense to backers. For a relatively small price, the alliance largely coordinates existing IU and Purdue infrastructure and intellectual assets.

“They basically said, ‘Look, you already have us here. You don’t have to buy this talent from someplace else,” Johnson said.

Vic Lechtenberg, Purdue’s vice provost for engagement, said, “The feedback we’ve gotten has just been phenomenal, that this is a great idea and something we should have been doing long ago.”

Linking universities and business also dovetails with broader biosciences trends. In its “State Biosciences Initiatives 2008” report, Battelle Memorial Institute, a Columbus, Ohio, think tank, noted rapid technological evolution and convergence has companies looking to universities and fellow businesses for new technology “rather than investing as many resources in internal high-risk R&D work as in the past.”

Firms chomping at the bit

Universities, meanwhile, are looking to corporations to help commercialize academic research and generate revenue.

“Such relationships are extremely important in the biosciences, as the link between basic science and new-product development is very strong,” Battelle said.

Before Daniels dropped his bomb Jan. 6, Purdue’s Lechtenberg had started taking inventory of IU and Purdue infrastructure statewide-everything from mass spectrometers to electron microscopes to nanotechnology fabrication clean rooms, a Purdue specialty.

University officials are trying to figure out how to share the assets. The assets generally are not used around the clock, and current use by businesses is usually ad hoc. The challenge is to establish a fee schedule and access policy, said Stephan: “We need to systematize those sorts of functions.”

Firms are chomping at the bit to get in the door.

“There are a lot of biotech companies that can really benefit from access to the equipment that a university has,” said Michael Evans, president and founder of Indianapolis-based AIT Laboratories, an 18-year-old toxicology lab that recently announced a local expansion.

Even established bioscience companies need access to cutting-edge technology, whether it’s in mass spectrometry or informatics, said Evans, a former faculty member of the IU School of Medicine.

Ultimately, Evans said, the Indiana Innovation Alliance is “about the creation of jobs, the creation of industries.”

Preceded by another initiative

With the alliance potentially on hold, the payoff to industry of a university partnership might first be demonstrated by another initiative announced just a month earlier this summer-the Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute.

The institute will focus on improving the way basic laboratory discoveries are transformed into new treatments and medical products. Having come out of the gate before the economy went into a steeper nose dive this fall, it nailed down more than $50 million in university, state, foundation and private funding that helped secure a $25 million grant from the National Institutes of Health.

The institute is also pioneering information technology that should pay dividends for the eventual launch of the alliance. That informatics resource, called CTSI Hub, is not a proprietary computer system, per se, but a portal to provide connections on various levels, not the least of which includes supercomputers at both universities.

The portal will have to open barriers to countless repositories about programs, researchers, industry partners and events. Researchers need to be able to electronically submit grant applications, while the institute also has to provide access and educational tools for the public.

CTSI Hub is bringing to light other logistical challenges university alliances can entail, such as clearance issues. For example: authenticating user credentials without requiring log-ins every step of the way. It’s not just university personnel, but also industry and the public, “groups that have traditionally not been aligned” to this extent, said William Barnett, institute director of information infrastructures.