Biotech Blooms at the University of Georgia

Clifton A. Baile The two-decades-old biotech industry remains largely concentrated in a few epicenters. Now Georgia is about to stake its claim on the biotech map, thanks to an unusual synergy of state government, industry, and academia. Since 1990, the Georgia Research Alliance (GRA) has purchased equipment, erected new facilities, and supported eminent scholars, building on existing infrastructure and scientific talent at its six major research universities. A series of losses in the 1980s

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Clifton A. Baile

The two-decades-old biotech industry remains largely concentrated in a few epicenters. Now Georgia is about to stake its claim on the biotech map, thanks to an unusual synergy of state government, industry, and academia.

Since 1990, the Georgia Research Alliance (GRA) has purchased equipment, erected new facilities, and supported eminent scholars, building on existing infrastructure and scientific talent at its six major research universities. A series of losses in the 1980s to other states--including elusive microelectronics and semiconductor industry bids, as well as the exodus of the homegrown biotech company Amgen--catalyzed the birth of the GRA in 1990. "The effort sees discoveries as a set of mechanisms, with scholars as centerpieces who will assemble integrated teams of experts to ease transition of basic research results to the marketplace," says Clifton A. Baile, an eminent scholar in agricultural biotechnology at the University of Georgia (UGA) in Athens, where ...

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