IU's Commitment to Indiana's Future
Leadership
The Indiana Life Sciences Initiative: An Update from Vice President Craig Brater
Issue No. 2
November 2006
This time last year we were hard at work on a strategic plan for life sciences. That plan became the blueprint for how we will support one of the most important economic initiatives in Indiana's history.
Now we're taking the next big step—we're working to enlist the support of the Indiana General Assembly, and all of state government, to invest in the future of life sciences at IU and in Indiana. [The Indiana Life Sciences Initiative (PDF, 575KB)]
When the legislature meets in January, we will ask for a substantial sum of new money—about $80 million, which we will match with $46.3 million from other non-state revenue sources. The $80 million request for the 2007–09 biennium would be a down payment on a decade-long program of investment that we expect will exceed $1 billion. Most of that money would be used to recruit top scientists to IU, the best minds we can find, who will create the discoveries and new ideas that will turn into medical breakthroughs and new jobs for people in Indiana and beyond.
I want to make a few points right away:
- The state of Indiana has the assets to be a player in the life sciences business—and that's not hype.
- Indiana University has built the foundation to make this happen—we expect to spend $357.5 million on life sciences research in the coming biennium.
- The investment that Indiana makes in life sciences at IU will be returned over and over in new money, companies, and jobs.
- This is not an Indianapolis or IU-only initiative. It's statewide and involves collaboration with our colleagues at Purdue, Notre Dame, and other Indiana universities.
- Indiana has health needs that must be tackled. Did you know that Indiana ranks sixth of all the states in numbers of cancer deaths per 100,000 people? That our smoking rates are among the worst in the country? That we're more overweight, and have higher rates of heart attacks and diabetes, than most other states?
The people of Indiana need this investment, and deserve it. We want better health and more wealth for all Hoosiers.
Here's what we will do over that decade:
- Create 2,500 jobs at IU, mostly in the life sciences. IU will provide about one-third of the money to do this, primarily with money it raises from philanthropy.
- Bring $2.4 billion in new money to the state from the federal and private grants that would otherwise flow to other states.
- In addition to the 2,500 jobs at IU, create about 11,500 new jobs for Hoosiers, for a total of 14,000 jobs in Indiana.
- Create, or attract, 100 new life sciences companies in Indiana.
- Make sure we have enough Indiana doctors to treat an older population with the illnesses aging brings, such as cancer and Alzheimer's disease.
- Develop treatments and prevention programs that improve Hoosiers' health and cut health care costs.
- Expand our medical education centers around the state, in partnership with their communities.
- Strengthen new ties of collaboration with Purdue, Notre Dame, and other Indiana universities. The $7 million cancer research program announced by the National Cancer Institute in October, involving Purdue and IU, is a perfect example.
These are big goals and big numbers in a state that's been scrambling just to balance the budget. So I need to explain why I think Indiana can do this and how we came up with those numbers—I assure you we didn't just make them up.
Indiana has long been a leading manufacturing state, and biotech is an important part of our manufacturing strength. We already have life science companies all over Indiana, large and small. In fact, this year the Battelle Memorial Institute think tank divided the U.S. biotech business into four main categories and then determined which states had the biggest shares of employment in each of those sectors. Indiana was one of just four states to specialize in at least three of the four: pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and agricultural chemicals. So we have a base to build on—but we're not yet considered a biotech hotspot.
A few years ago, one of the nation's top think tanks, the Brookings Institution, identified the nation's top biotechnology economic regions. They based their results on metrics such as jobs, companies, patents, and the like.
Many of the top regions are places you know: San Diego, San Francisco, Boston, and Research Triangle Park, among others. Imagine you've highlighted those places on a map of the country. Now highlight the regions that receive the most biomedical research funding from the National Institutes of Health. What you'll find is they correlate almost exactly. In fact, it's fair to say that every biotech economic hotspot is connected to one or more of the nation's leading life sciences research institutions in terms of NIH grants.
What's the connection between NIH research grants and biotech jobs? We call it idea flow. Research produces discoveries that get turned into ideas that lead to new products, companies, and jobs.
We know what we need to do to put Indiana onto the map of biotech hotspots: IU needs to get on that map as a top life science research institution that creates more ideas. How? Well, we know our scientists are just as good at getting research grants as scientists at other universities—we've done the analysis. But those other top research universities have many more scientists than we do. So we need to recruit more top-notch scientists to Indiana University.
We have put together our Life Sciences Strategic Plan to help IU get on the map:
- It lays out our research priorities.
- It identifies where we want to go—basically, the details of getting on the map.
- It specifies how we get there—how many scientists we need to recruit and how much lab space they need.
Over the next 10 years, we'll use the money invested by the state, along with our share of funds, to hire 476 top scientists in Bloomington, Indianapolis, and at the eight School of Medicine centers around Indiana. Our investments in the regional centers will reflect the resources and needs of those communities, such as boosting medical student enrollments to prevent rural doctor shortages and working with other universities' scientists on cancer research. We'll work closely with local initiatives, such as cardiovascular research at the School of Medicine–Fort Wayne, which has received $3 million in support from the Lutheran Foundation since 2002.
We're confident that we can hire and retain top scientists because we've done it with the $155 million that the Lilly Endowment gave IU for the Indiana Genomics Initiative. More than 60 new scientists are bringing in new grants and reporting new discoveries. So we're confident that our team of scientists, the IU veterans and the newcomers, will produce the idea flow we need to build a powerful life sciences economy in Indiana.
We already have strengths in the life sciences; now we need to boost the flow of new ideas. Other states are working toward similar goals and making big investments. To compete, we need to make the same investments in the future of Indiana, and keep the momentum going. We hope you will support us in this important endeavor.
D. Craig Brater
Vice President for Life Sciences
