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Friday, February 8, 2008
Scientists Moving In as Clusters Spread
Every where you turn, there’s a cluster.
There’s the Scripps-Max Planck biotech center emerging in Palm Beach County, the Torrey Pines-Tradition complex in Port St. Lucie and a significant medical city growing a couple of hours’ drive north, in Orlando-area’s Lake Nona.
But will these clusters be competitors for tight federal science funding? Or will they become collaborators, able to attract the competitive mega-grants issued by the National Institutes of Health? What’s your prediction?
We asked Dr. Daniel P. Kelly, the Burnham Institute’s newly named scientific director and chief recruiter, who’ll move to Florida in July. Currently, Kelly is a St. Louis-based physician-scientist who studies the effects of diabetes and hypertension on heart metabolism and function.
You can see one of his recent papers here. He notes that diabetics’ hearts recover poorly after heart attack, compared to other people. Using genetically engineered mice, he delved deeply into how their heart cells draw the energy needed to contract. Diabetics’ heart cells use fatty acids for energy rather than broken-down sugars. This creates an imbalance in cellular energy stores, Kelly said.
Very basic science. Dr. Kelly says his hope is that the research will lead to new diagnostic tools and treatments to prevent cardiovascular disease in people with diabetes.
Kelly is currently director of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis’ Center for Cardiovascular Research. He’s also chief of its cardiovascular division in its Department of Medicine, where he runs an active laboratory and oversees clinical and research administrative activities. Moving to Burnham will allow him more time for research, he’s said.
You’ll recall The Burnham Institute for Biomedical Research was actively wooed by Palm Beach County, among others, but it selected Orlando for its richer offer, including land at Lake Nona, home to Tiger Woods. That meant what could have been a major cluster here instead grew scattered across the state’s midsection.
Burnham’s total incentive package was worth about $350 million, including a display inside Disney’s Epcott Center, valued at an estimated $11 million. (How does one appraise something like that?) State taxpayers paid about half Burnham’s incentive package.
Scripps was recruited to Florida with $310 million from the state and a $200 million local commitment.
Torrey Pines chose St. Lucie County after a rude snub by Palm Beach County commissioners and a state-and-local incentive package of about $200 million.
Burnham’s new campus is slated to open in spring of 2009, probably five or six months after The Scripps Research Institute’s permanent campus opens within the Abacoa campus of Florida Atlantic University in Jupiter. Torrey Pines permanent campus should open in 2009 as well.
Scripps, recruited to Florida in 2003/2004, has been working out of temporary labs and already has about 200 Florida employees in 44,000 square feet of buildings at FAU.
Burnham, recruited two years later, has about four scientific recruits, including medicinal chemist Greg Roth and molecular biologist Bjorn Tyrberg, who work within about 14,000 square feet of temporary lab space in the Florida Blood Bank’s Orlando-based headquarters.
Torrey Pines has three recruits so far: Molecular biologist Dr. Colette Dooley and computational chemists Jose . Medina-Franco and Karina Martinez-Mayorga.
While Scripps awaits the arrival of German’s Max Planck Society, Torrey Pines has helped attract the Oregon Health & Science University’s Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute to Port St. Lucie.
Father north, the medical city Burnham plans to occupy in Lake Nona will have several clinical neighbors. The Nemours children’s hospital plans to build a 100-bed hospital on 60 acres near Burnham. Plus, the University of Central Florida medical school and a VA hospital may build there, too.
If you happen to have a PhD in chemistry, biology or physiology, this is a great time to think about moving to Florida.
Kelly says he’ll hire 30 lab heads over the next five to ten years, spanning disciplines from chemistry to physiology.
As for competition? He believes the science that develops in Florida will grow together in a beneficial way.
“We hope to build many collaborative bridges,” he said.
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