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Biotechnology
keeps up its slow, steady growth
This once-sleepy
city is the growth champ of Hampton Roads
Related
story:
A chat with the head of the Virginia
Bio-Technology Research Park
by
Robert Burke
Virginia Business
June 2003
Biotechnology
in Virginia continues to grow. For evidence, consider
the $500 million Janelia Farm project now taking shape
on farmland in northern Loudoun County. The look is
distinctively different with its terrace-style design,
dug into a hillside and barely rising about ground level.
The project, developed by the Howard Hughes Medical
Institute, also has a unique mission. When it opens
in three years, the facility will be a premier biomedicine
research center, bringing together teams of scientists
from diverse fields to work in a huge complex of state-of-the-art
laboratories.
Janelia
Farm highlights the enormous changes in biology research
brought on by breakthroughs in human genome studies
and the increasing use of computers in science. “The
landscape of opportunities in the biomedical sciences
is not what it used to be,” says Thomas Cech, president
of the Maryland-based Hughes institute. The private
institute, which has a $10 billion endowment, is building
the center on a 281-acre site on the Potomac River a
few miles from Dulles International Airport. “We
want to be involved in creating ... the next generation
of instruments,” says Cech, who won a Nobel Prize
for chemistry in 1989.
The
Hughes project is the biggest among a handful of developments
that are lifting Virginia’s ambitions to develop
a biotech industry. Last year Indiana-based Eli Lilly
& Co. announced plans to build a $425 million manufacturing
plant in Prince William County. The company has begun
hiring and the plant, which will make insulin, is scheduled
to open next year. In addition, the Connecticut-based
Albert B. Sabin Vaccine Institute is considering moving
its 90-employee headquarters to Loudoun to be near the
Hughes center. The Sabin institute reportedly may also
build its own research facilities in Loudoun and is
considering opening a public health university that
could employ up to 5,000 people.
These
latest developments are giving Virginia’s biotech
sector a big boost. “You take Eli Lilly and Hughes
and Sabin — it’s just fantastic,” says
Mark Herzog, executive director of the Virginia Biotechnology
Association. Already near the Lilly site is the American
Type Culture Collection, the main U.S. repository of
cell lines for life science research and business. In
total the state has about 170 biotechnology companies,
according to the biotech association — most in
Northern Virginia.
To
be sure, there are problems. CropTech, a Blacksburg
firm that garnered national attention for producing
enzymes from tobacco plants, has shut down after going
bankrupt. Other states are farther ahead: Pennsylvania
last year invested $60 million in venture funds and
North Carolina committed $42 million. Maryland is a
regional king thanks to the National Institutes of Health
in Bethesda. Virginia needs to spend more on research
and development at its universities, and create a network
of well-equipped biotech incubators. Gov. Mark Warner
hopes a 44-member commission will help drum up more
funding.
In
a sense, Loudoun was lucky to get the Hughes project.
Cech and others simply picked the site two years ago
and bought it for $51 million without any lobbying from
the county. They chose it because it was relatively
close to their Bethesda, Md., headquarters and close
to Dulles so visiting scientists can easily reach the
facility.
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