Public, private effort to boost biotech

Long live bioscience.

This phrase is Colorado’s new economic development rallying cry that can be heard from the rooftops of Capitol Hill all the way to ivy-covered walls of Colorado State University.

In order to turn rhetoric into action, the Governor’s Office of Innovation and Technology (OIT) unveiled an action plan to grow the biosciences sector into a key driver of Colorado’s economy.

The plan, called Colorado’s Place in the Sun: a Bioscience Future ? An Action Plan to Grow Colorado’s Bioscience Cluster, was developed by Battelle Memorial Institute, a Columbus, Ohio-based $1 billion research and development nonprofit organization.

The six-month, $185,000 effort was sponsored by Amgen Inc., the Colorado Economic Development Commission, Colorado Institute of Technology, Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce, IBM Corp. Life Science, and the Governor’s Office of Economic Development and International Trade.

The goal of the plan is to foster an innovative climate that leads toward commercialization of emerging technologies and helps new bioscience companies succeed and grow. At the core of the plan are three strategies:

§ Create a business climate sensitive to and supportive of the needs and issues facing bioscience firms.

§ Grow the state’s bioscience cluster by creating a bioscience entrepreneurial culture that turns research discoveries into new products and services and cutting-edge firms and provides appropriate incentives to research institutions and industry.

§ Expand the research base and build research excellence in the state’s bioscience niches.

Each strategy includes a number of specific actions. A number of these actions have already been accomplished, said John Hansen, chief technology officer for the state.

One is appointing a high-level bioscience advocate, which has been accomplished through the appointment of Paul Ray as director of the Office of Life Sciences and Biotechnology in the innovation and technology office. Ray formerly was the chief executive of Boulder-based Image Guided Technologies, which was sold to Stryker Corp. for $15 million, and he had announced the formation of Konrad Capital LLC to provide seed money for biomedical and med-tech startups.

Unlike Hansen, who is paid $1 per year for his service to the state, Ray is receiving an undisclosed salary provided through private funds, said OIT Spokeswoman Helen Tueffel.

Another is the ongoing development of the Fitzsimons campus of the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center and the University of Colorado Hospital.

Another is the establishment of a bioscience industry association. This effort is under way through the leadership of Denise Brown as executive director of the Colorado Biotechnology Association.

The key players in the development of Colorado’s bioscience future include industry, research universities and the state, Brown said, and each is responsible for the plan’s success. ?Each organization, as it takes the lead on its key components of the plan, will need to go back and assess its resource needs and come up with a plan to accomplish them,? Brown said.

For example, the association, as a representative of industry, ?needs to take the lead on a comprehensive communications plan. The association acknowledges that the rest of the country needs to understand that Colorado is a good place to do biotech business,? she said.

Brown also said both the University of Colorado and Colorado State University are very committed to improving their technology transfer systems. ?That’s already an agenda,? she said. ?This plan gives a focus to the life science within the universities that have the potential to be commercialized.?

Brown said Battelle’s findings and recommendations should not come as a surprise to anyone. ?The key stakeholders already have within their core missions to do these things,? she said ?The difference is that it will be coordinated in a strategic way and be more effective because we can leverage each other’s efforts.?

An area of the plan that is of much concern is funding. The plan calls for tax incentives, tax credits and seed funding. According to Hansen, the Colorado Institute of Technology will be the primary granting organization.

Ray said the institute can get some grants and leverage what’s out there for either matching funds or standalone programs.

In terms of a time frame, Hansen views the Battelle plan as ?a three- to five-year road map,? he said.

Hansen is also very optimistic about continued government support for the biosciences. ?The governor is all about the creation of technology jobs and doing whatever the government can do to accelerate the industry’s growth in Colorado,? he said. The governor will stay involved because it’s critical to him. Even during the darkest days of the technology downturn in 2001, the governor was actively engaged in believing in technology.?

Ray points to the connection between biosciences and health care as an important reason that the biosciences will fly in Colorado. ?The health-care industry will benefit,? Ray said. ?We’re adding years to everyone’s life. That’s a lot of reason why this isn’t going to go away. With biotechnology and the medical sector really on the upswing, being able to put our shoulder into (the plan) with the resources we put together, further creates economic development for this state that won’t recession-proof us, but it goes a long way.?

Battelle has built an entire business line creating strategic plans like this for other states. The plans typically point to the future based on the historical perspective of a particular industry. For example, the report focuses on the current strength of the bioscience sector in Colorado.

According to the study, Colorado has a growing base of bioscience companies. In 2002, the state had employment of 17,681 across 604 establishments in the biosciences. Between 1995 and 2002, the number of bioscience establishments in Colorado grew slightly faster than the United States, increasing by 35 percent compared to 29 percent at the national level. During the time period, employment in Colorado’s bioscience sector increased by 4 percent.

Additionally, jobs created in the bioscience industry are among some of the highest paying jobs in the state. The annual average employees wages in biosciences in 2000 were about $52,000, while average wages in the private sector were about $36,000.

As chief technology officer for the state, John Hansen sees the Battelle strategic plan from a big picture perspective as well. Not only can it be used to grow bioscience, it can be used as a blueprint for other technology sectors including telecommunications, storage technology and aerospace. ?The value of project like this is that puts a specified process in place that cannot only be used for biotechnology as a sector but for other sectors as we look at our approach to helping them,? Hansen said. Contact Caron Schwartz Ellis at (303) 440-4950 or e-mail csellis@bcbr.com

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