Medical research dollars drive life sciences

Editor’s note: This is the third in a series of stories exploring the many facets of the “life science” industry.

In the wide-ranging life science industry, which lumps together agriculture, engineering, food science, plant science and more, medical research is a major moneymaker. From drug development to medical equipment to lab services, health care affects everyone and often brings big headlines - the perfect recipe for a growing industry seeking intellectual and economic capital.

Even everyday health care contributes to the life science industry.

"Hospitals themselves are life science enterprises," said Jake Halliday, head of the University of Missouri-Columbia incubator project.

More than 75 percent of Missouri life science jobs are in hospitals and laboratories, according to a 1993 report by the Battelle Institute. The fields of medical devices and drugs and pharmaceuticals account for about 45 percent of non-hospital life science jobs.

Drug research offers the greatest commercial potential for "home runs," Halliday said. Research related to medical devices and diagnostics, which includes compounds needed for MRI and CAT scans, serves a more supportive role, sometimes offering up commercially viable "base hits."

"Diagnostics and devices are lower-hanging fruit because they have a much shorter development time than a new drug," which takes an average 12 years of development, Halliday said. The drug and pharmaceutical sector is sometimes called therapeutics and includes drugs, injectibles, inhalers, patches and other treatments.

Blockbuster medical discoveries, such as a cancer treatment or an arthritis drug, can open a floodgate of income. But to get those breakthroughs, researchers need funding and facilities.

"We’re going to see more and more examples of strategic alliances between university researchers and established industry," Halliday said. "Research does not become commercial in a vacuum."

In the proposed MU incubator, large private companies would be invited to open research and development labs. Smaller lab-services companies, such as local Analytical Bio-Chemistry Laboratories - where Halliday recently resigned as CEO - or Boyce & Bynum Pathology Laboratories, could move in and serve incubator tenants.

Comparative medicine, which applies to both humans and animals, is another health-care chunk of the life science pie. MU’s Comparative Medicine Center and the Research Animal Diagnostic Laboratory, or RADIL, use rats, pigs and other animals to study human diseases. Randy Prather, an MU animal science professor, has gained national renown for research on pig genetics that could have human heart transplant applications.

MU researcher Peter Gordon’s study on dog brain tumors could also translate into human medicine.

The University of Missouri’s stalled bid for a $190 million bond issue from the General Assembly includes $75 million for a new health sciences research center at MU. Another $52 million from the bond proposal was tagged for a health science facilities at University of Missouri-Kansas City.

The Senate Appropriations Committee soured on the bill after sponsors tacked on numerous projects for other Missouri universities, bringing the total to $350 million. They expressed concern over the inclusion of non-life science projects, questioning the relevance of engineering, for example, to the life science field.

University officials have said the project could create 500 jobs and bring in more than $41 million in outside grant support annually.

The MU Life Science Center under construction at the corner of Rollins Street and College Avenue, however, is scheduled to open this spring. The $60 million center will house 44 laboratories, making it MU’s largest research facility. Jane Phillips, life science development director, said MU ranks fifth nationally in federal grant funding for plant sciences but falls short in medical research dollars.

"If we can build our medical research capacity to something that’s similarly prominent in the nation, I think we might see more businesses spin out of the medical side," she said.

Some describe life sciences as including food, health and the environment, Phillips said, and the center aims to integrate all three.

"To study health without those two aspects is only looking at part of the picture," she said.

---

Reach Christi Nies at (573) 815-1704 or cnies@tribmail.com.

---