Max Becherer / Staff In the genes: Lidija Pestic-Dragovich, Ph.D, front, and Hiro Nitta, Ph.D., research cell structure and development for Ventana Medical Systems Inc.

By Jane Erikson
ARIZONA DAILY STAR

It is Tucson's least developed industry cluster, yet one of the most important for the city's future economy.

And now a project under development at the University of Arizona is breathing new life into Tucson's dormant biotechnology cluster.

A number of biotech companies have grown up in Tucson over the last 20 years. Two of them - Sunquest Information Systems and Ventana Medical Systems - have established a worldwide presence.

But if Tucson is to reach its goal of becoming the biotech center of the Southwest, it must kindle the kinds of relationships found in cities like San Diego, Boston and North Carolina's Research Triangle Park, where major biotech companies are networked with start-up firms and academic institutions.

Why Tucson's biotech cluster has been slow to develop is not clear.

What is abundantly clear to science and industry leaders is that it's time for Tucson to move forward, and fast. Advances in life sciences, notably last year's completion of the mapping of the human genome, have opened up whole new possibilities for keeping people healthy, healing them when they are sick, making their food more wholesome and generally enhancing the quality of their lives.

Biotech benefits

From an industry standpoint, biotechnology has much to offer. It's clean and non-polluting. And it pays well, with jobs starting in Tucson at $40,000 to $50,000 a year.

"I really believe the defining technology of the coming decade will be in biotechnology," says Eugene Sander, dean of the University of Arizona College of Agriculture. "That's going to be as important as the silicon chip was over the last three decades."

Recognizing that, the university is establishing an Institute for Biomedical Science and Biotechnology - a $60 million project that will create a research environment in which researchers from an array of scientific disciplines can work together.

Tom Baldwin, head of the UA department of biochemistry, is heading up the project. A renowned protein chemist, Baldwin says he routinely collaborates with scientists in other fields - computer scientists, physicists, mathematicians - whose expertise is relevant to his work.

"The practice of biology has changed forever in the last couple of years," Baldwin says. "When I was an undergraduate, I was the master of all the technology I needed. Those days are gone."

An institution

The 200,000-square-foot institute is expected to open in 2005. The complex will integrate faculty and graduate students from the UA Colleges of Medicine, Science, Pharmacy, Agriculture, Nursing and Public Health, as well as Optical Sciences, the Arizona Cancer Center and other UA divisions.

The institute will allow those researchers to work side by side with each other, with start-up companies that can lease space inside the building and with venture capitalists to help scientists create their own start-ups and move their good ideas to market.

Baldwin and others expect the institute to draw major biotech companies to Tucson, where they will pump hundreds of millions of dollars into the Tucson economy.

Ventana CEO Chris Gleeson agrees the Institute would create "great potential" for collaboration between university scientists and established firms.

Founded in 1989, Ventana has 500 employees worldwide, 300 of them in Tucson. The company has installed 3,000 of its diagnostic and testing systems in labs around the world, and is projecting $90 million in sales this year.

Gleeson is in discussion with the university about a joint venture for drug discovery in the cancer field. "We're very interested in the possiblity of forming an alliance," he says.

A closer look: Hirro Nitta studies genes. A new institute will likely lure more biotech business to Tucson.

Dr. Fernando Martinez, director of the UA College of Medicine's Respiratory Sciences Center, describes the potential benefits to university researchers.

Researchers from respiratory sciences and biochemistry are working together on a project funded by the National Institutes of Health, attempting to understand the genetics of a type of white blood cell that is abnormally high in people with asthma.

The researchers know the cells, called eosinophils, live longer in people with asthma - but they don't know why. By examining the cell's genetic makeup, they hope to find an answer that might point to a way to prevent or cure asthma, a disease that affects 17 million Americans, including 316,000 Arizonans.

Communication between the two groups is slowed by the mile that separates the Arizona Health Sciences Center north of East Speedway Boulevard from the biochemistry building near the south end of the main campus.

"With the institute, this type of collaboration will become more possible," Martinez says.

One of the institute's supporters is Steve Weathers, who will start here July 2 as president and CEO of the Greater Tucson Economic Council. Weathers comes here from San Diego, where he spent the past 11 years building on the city's established biotech industry cluster.

Weathers has an "If we build it they will come" attitude toward the UA institute. "But we need also to be proactive and make sure companies get the message that the institute is here, and 'You really don't want to be late to this party. If anything, you may want to get here early,'" Weathers says.

The probable site for the Institute for Biomedical Science and Biotechnology is a parking lot on the north side of Speedway, between Cherry and Warren avenues.

Plans for the institute were laid out last month at a meeting at the Arizona Inn. The UA Office of Economic Development organized the May 24 meeting, bringing together science and business leaders for the first time in recent memory to discuss the future of biotech in Tucson. Those who were there describe Baldwin's talk on the institute as the high point of the gathering.

The competition

Not surprisingly, cities across the country are scrambling to grow their own biotech clusters to compete with those already thriving in cities like San Diego, Boston and North Carolina's Research Triangle Park. Among the most successful has been Kansas City, Mo., home of the Kansas City Area Life Sciences Institute. In April, the Stowers Institute for Medical Research opened.

But Kansas City was blessed in a way most cities can only dream of. Jim and Virginia Stowers are cancer survivors who amassed a fortune as owners of American Century, the investment management firm. The couple seeded the institute that bears their name with endowments worth $570 million. The institute will later receive funds from the couple's estate, currently valued at $1.5 billion.

The price and partnership

The Institute for Biomedical Sciences and Biotechnology is getting started with $2 million in federal money, and the UA is seeking an additional $10 million from Congress this year. The rest of the $60 million construction cost will be covered by bonds and money raised through Campaign Arizona, the UA's $1 billion fund drive, which has reached about half its goal.

A portion of the UA's share of revenues from Proposition 301 - a sales tax increase for education - will help bring new faculty to the institute and strengthen its patenting capabilities. In fact, the Prop 301 money has made the institute financially feasible, said Bruce Wright, UA associate vice president for economic development.

The institute's ability to succeed will be greatly enhanced, proponents say, by its link to the UA - already a world leader in optics, new drug development, cancer treatment and prevention and artificial heart technology, for example - and one of only a few universities in the country with colleges in four major health sciences: pharmacy, medicine, nursing and public health.

"There's not another academic institution in the west that has the comprehensiveness that we have," says Pharmacy Dean Lyle Bootman.

The institute will complement his college's programs in new drug discovery and development, Bootman says. "To develop a new pharmaceutical involves clinical evaluations at several levels," he adds. "We have that capability here at the UA.

Ron Weinstein, head of pathology in the UA College of Medicine, is the director of the Arizona Telemedicine Program, a high-tech link between UA doctors and rural hospitals statewide.

He also helped start Sunquest and Ventana; both were spun off from work in the pathology department. The Institute for Biomedical Science and Biotechnology will only enhance the potential for more such ventures in the future, Weinstein says.

"There's a wonderful convergence going on here," Weinstein adds. "We're having a great time."

* Contact Star Business reporter Jane Erikson at 573-4118 or at jerikson@azstarnet.com

Husband and wife researchers Mike and Elaine Jacobson have achieved a perfect marriage of science and business.