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The University of Maryland is going to be at the forefront of research examining the forces driving the competitiveness and complexity of the nation's biotechnology industry.

With a $250,000, three-year matching grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation in New York, the university will establish a research center bringing academicians and industry representatives together to identify ways to make the risky business of biotechnology more efficient and effective.

Called the Sloan Biotechnology Industry Center, the organization joins a network of 25 similar university-based facilities around the country - all initially funded by the foundation started by former General Motors Corp. boss Alfred P. Sloan Jr. - spanning 25 industries.

The University of Maryland is the first to focus on biotechnology.

It takes between 10 and 14 years to develop a therapeutic and it costs over $800 million, almost $1 billion, to produce a single product, said Shawn Lofstrom, the University of Maryland center's research director. If you can find ways to reduce it even by 10 percent, that would be phenomenal.

Lofstrom and the center's director, Jacques Gansler, have spent the last several months - with the input of the biotechnology industry, local and national - developing a research agenda and recruiting researchers from fields as diverse as biology, chemistry, business law and ethics.

The five areas of study that emerged cover the lifespan of a biotechnology company, from the uncertainties facing startups to regulation and public policy.

The center will examine, for example, strategies that could help biotechnology companies reduce costs and development time for startup products. It will weigh the costs and benefits of conducting research and clinical trials overseas, and it will analyze the government policies and industry-wide practices that give the United States its competitive edge.

Evaluating the uncertainties startups face likely will be one of three areas the center will start to tackle this summer, the rest to follow in the fall and spring, said Lofstrom.

Fundraising will be a major factor in the center's future since the $250,000 Sloan Foundation grant is nonrenewable.

This is seed funding, said Gail Pesyna, program director of the foundation. They have to come up with a match right up front and show us what they've already got. It [the grant] is helpful because they can use the funding to help leverage other sources of funding. It's like the Good Housekeeping seal of approval.

The centers thriving around the country generally need between $500,000 and $1 million per year to operate, Pesyna said.

She added, however, that the University of Maryland was chosen - after a number of other universities had been turned down over the years - in part because it has the kind of deep relationships it will need with the biotechnology industry to attract additional funding.

Biotechnology companies will likely support the center through membership, said Gansler, but the specifics are still being worked out.

by Robyn Lamb
The Daily Record (University of Maryland) www.newsdesk.umd.edu
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