Bioinformatics institute gains funding
Business First of Buffalo - by Annemarie Franczyk Business First
Buffalo business and academic leaders say they have attracted private funding sources from points across the country needed to help make the region a national leader in the pharmaceutical industry.
Negotiations are in progress, but the group believes it soon will be able to announce multimillion-dollar investments pledged by three to four major donors and several others in support of the proposed bioinformatics institute. It will link the new Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus with the University at Buffalo's supercomputer, which can analyze and store large amounts of medical and research data. Some estimates have the project hitting $100 million.
A strong biotech base here, combined with its existing cadre of research scientists, research sites like UB and Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute and clinicians and hospitals, will help Buffalo capture the economic benefits of drug development from concept to product, officials said. In the past, Buffalo has claimed portions of the industry, but has lost some of the economic benefits to other cities.
"Bioinformatics is a whole new industry that Buffalo can become a leader in," said Betty Capaldi, UB provost. "The exciting part of this is not just the creation of jobs, but we can cure disease."
Bioinformatics is the science that has evolved from the identification of the human genome. Involving complicated data analysis and evaluation, it will allow scientists to better predict illness and disease, and ultimately design drugs to treat or cure those conditions.
There is a sense of urgency on the part of the group lobbying for money. Buffalo is competing for state funding with Rochester and Albany, which are developing other high-tech projects. Further, other regions in the country are similarly hopeful of building a bioinformatics base and also are searching for private financial support.
Some have doubted Buffalo's success in securing private money because it doesn't have a hometown-based big-name company to automatically approach. But members of the group say as a result of having to go out of town, they've been able to draw together several different interested organizations, some of which are considering moving a segment of the business here to have access to the technology.
"There is no science race that meets this. It's a race for the cure," said Jaylan Turkkan, UB vice president for research. "Similarly, what a huge economic impact it will have because when big (pharmaceutical companies) get involved, that has big implications for job creation."
The group, divided into teams of a UB administrator, research scientist and a Buffalo business leader, have traveled to high-tech hotbeds like the Silicon Valley in California and Triangle Park in North Carolina for the past five months talking to health-care industry companies large and small. There's reticence on all sides to discuss numbers, but the group says it is approaching private investment that will be two-to-three times a state contribution promised by Albany.
The state money will be released when the private partners are confirmed, which is "close," said Buffalo businessman Paul Harder. And no one's revealing names but there are suggestions that the investment scenario will include significant national players.
"It looks pretty good. There are a couple major entities out there who are really top of the industry that are close to being partners with us," Harder said.
Enthusiastic best describes the group members who believe that bioinformatics is as important a development as the Internet was in the past decades.
"If we didn't think we had an opportunity to do something really terrific, we wouldn't be doing this. This is the best opportunity I've seen in my lifetime to create business here in Western New York. This is the cutting edge of a whole new science. We have the right stuff here," Harder said.
Bioinformatics is the keystone of a three-part state initiative to build a biotechnology base. Two related projects have received state funding in recent weeks:
• A biotech research laboratory facility, to be located on the city's West Side, where scientists from four institutions will conduct gene research. To be known as the Center of Disease Modeling and Therapy Discovery, it is part of the state's Strategically Targeted Academic Research program. It received $15.3 million.
• A Center for Advanced Technology was funded $1 million to help link biomedical and bioengineering researchers with manufacturers to move products to market.
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