Bioscience in the sun

It's hard to imagine a more affable tour guide than Bart Chernow. A newcomer to the University of Miami's growing medical school, the vice-president for special programmes and resource strategy seems genuinely smitten with the place. Showing off the school's lush courtyards and new facilities, including a 35,000-square-metre clinical centre that opened in January and a 16,700-square-metre biomedical research institute due to open next year, he stops to pick up a few bits of rubbish from an otherwise spotless pavement. He's both booster and caretaker.

With all the gusto of a storyteller, Chernow boasts about the medical school's promise and lauds its leadership (former US health and human services secretary Donna Shalala is the university president) and philanthropic success. But when it comes to discussing early plans for a new biotech park next to the medical school, his primary charge in his new position, Chernow is more cautious. He knows that success is by no means guaranteed. Biotechnology companies rarely make profits, and other locales in Florida, from Tampa to Palm Beach, already have major biotech park efforts under way. "What we would like to do is understate and outperform," he says.

D. PEEBLES/CORBIS

Although wary of tight US National Institutes of Health (NIH) budgets and the high-risk nature of banking on biotech firms, researchers in Florida are brimming with optimism. Buoyed by an influx of state funds doled out by former Governor Jeb Bush, the bioscience field in Florida is booming. Alongside Disney and orange-tree groves, the state government envisions a new industry bringing tens of thousands of square metres of lab space, well-paid jobs and, eventually, disease treatments and royalties

Already there are major signs of success. The state has convinced three highly regarded California-based institutes — Scripps, Torrey Pines and Burnham — to set up campuses in Florida. Scripps Florida is operating in temporary buildings with 230 staff while its state-of-the art facilities are being constructed, due to open in early 2009. Eventually the Scripps campus will include three buildings with 32,000 square metres of open lab space at a total cost of $186 million, paid for by Palm Beach County. The state has added about $310 million in start-up funds over ten years. Burnham plans to build up a 250-person operation over the next seven to ten years, mostly using newly recruited scientists. With more than $80 million of funding from state and local governments, Torrey Pines plans to open its 9,300-square-metre research centre in 2009 in Port St Lucie, with a projected 189 new jobs over the next ten years.

Scripps president Richard Lerner encouraged Torrey Pines founder and president Richard Houghten to pursue a Florida branch as well. "I'll have Jeb call you," said Lerner over dinner one night. A few weeks later the governor was on the phone. Early last year, Houghten found himself scouting sites in Florida. "I had a San Diego-centric view of the world," he says. "We flew out to Florida and loved it."

Building for the future: an artist's impression of the new Scripps Florida campus and (inset) the site today.

Florida universities have also had a boost, largely from state and local sources. The University of Florida has a new state-sponsored Center of Excellence for Regenerative Health Biotechnology (CERHB), a 26,000-square-metre, $85-million cancer-genetics building, an Emerging Pathogens Institute — which recently landed $55 million in state funding and is building a 9,300-square-metre lab space — and a burgeoning biomedical-engineering department that's seen $120 million of investment over the past four and a half years. The University of South Florida will house another state-funded centre of excellence, this one focused on biomolecular identification and targeted therapeutics. The university is collaborating with SRI International, an independent R&D organization, to build a new marine-technology research facility in St Petersburg. SRI expects to grow from 40 staff to 200 in the next ten years; the state gave $20 million and local government provided the site for a 2,700-square-metre facility.

Pascal Goldschmidt has lured high-profile researchers to Florida.UNIV. MIAMI SCHOOL OF MEDICINE

The calibre of the recruits coming to Florida campuses is impressive. Miami's medical-school dean, Pascal Goldschmidt, convinced his former Duke University colleague Margaret Pericak-Vance, an expert in the genetics of neurodegenerative diseases, to come to Miami — bringing 40 of her team, including 12 faculty members. Goldschmidt also lured Marc Lippman, the chair of internal medicine at the University of Michigan who will become Miami's chair of medicine. Scripps recruits include chair of cancer biology John Cleveland, an 18-year veteran of St Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, and vice-president of scientific operations Harry Orf, who was director of the molecular-biology laboratories at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, for 21 years.

Why Florida? In addition to the influx of state funding, the state has low corporate taxes and no personal income tax. Also, the environment and demographics are research-friendly. The numerous elderly citizens represent both potential study subjects for neurodegenerative disease, and sources of philanthropic support. For those studying the genetics of disease, the mix of races — from West Indian to Cuban to Latin American — matches the country's evolving demographics. Florida's warm, wet climate and influx of immigrants make it the perfect place to study emerging infectious disease. The acting director of the Institute of Emerging Pathogens, Richard Moyer, suggests that its strength lies in bringing together the resources of large, extensive departments to study the movement of pathogens in food, plants and animals — resources not found at Harvard or Johns Hopkins. And then there are the warm climate and great beaches.

Margaret Pericak-Vance (top) and Bill Ditto think Florida has potential.DUKE UNIV. PHOTOGRAPHY/J. WALLACE

The sunshine state seems to have everything. But it can't escape the major barrier facing bioscience researchers elsewhere: tight NIH budgets. Orf sees an upside to expanding in the era of shrinking federal funding: start-up packages will help fill the holes left by absent NIH funding, at least for a few years, although researchers will have to become self-sustaining. Institutes are already looking to philanthropy within the state. "People are beginning to realize that the real growth is in private philanthropy," says Moyer.

Given the emphasis that many institutions put on translational research, corporate partnerships will be key. In November, Scripps announced a five-year, $100-million collaboration with Pfizer on diseases including cancer, diabetes and mental illness. In exchange for funds, Pfizer will have the right to license therapies. Translational research is a big draw. "I have to turn people away," says Pat Griffin, head of the Scripps Translational Research Institute. "It's a rare opportunity to learn translational research that isn't in industry."

Late last year the Moffit Cancer Center at the University of South Florida signed a collaborative agreement with Merck to build, with the help of $35 million in state and local funds, a for-profit institute called M2Gen. At the CERHB, the mission is to move bench research in the clinic by making drugs for phase I and II clinical trials. Clients include start-ups and independent researchers. "Not many universities have similar operations," says Richard Snyder, director of the University of Florida's biotherapeutic programmes at the centre. The emphasis on translational research, says Snyder, should improve the chances for NIH funds, as the agency's roadmap plan calls for such projects.

Can such ventures help transform Tampa, Palm Beach or Miami into the next big biotech cluster? Economist and consultant Joseph Cortright has his doubts. In analysing biotech successes and failures for the Brookings Institution in Washington DC two years ago, Cortright found that the industry, which rarely produces a profitable company, is highly concentrated in a few places, including San Francisco, Boston and San Diego, where institutes and universities are well established. "It's expensive, time-consuming and very risky," he says of the industry. Some companies, he notes, are saying they might set up shop in Florida, but, seeing the tens of millions garnered by Burnham, Torrey Pines and Scripps, they have their hands out as well. "The question is, when does Florida stop giving out money?" Cortright says.

Also of concern is the supply of support staff. Recruitment for top positions remains strong. "In the first couple of years we worried no one would come to party," says Bill Ditto, chair of the University of Florida's growing biomedical-engineering department. "Now I'm crying with the quality of talent we have to turn away." But Orf says that support positions, such as technicians, are lacking. Scripps and others have started outreach efforts to foster an understanding of biotechnology in young Floridians, hoping to encourage a generation that is suited to the emerging bioscience and biotech sectors. At Snyder's centre, they are developing courses for University of Florida students focused on topics ranging from understanding regulatory compliance to assay development to working in science teams.

With ample money, top-flight talent and state-of the art facilities, Florida aims to be a major bioscience player for years to come. Whether the time and money invested will yield products, therapies and state revenue is an open question. "I'm cautiously optimistic," Chernow repeats with a smile.