The Biotech Triangle

Editor's Note: This is the fourth and final installment this year of a series that focuses on regional hot spots in the United States John Hamer, a tenured professor of microbiology at Purdue University, decided he had reached the top of the academic career ladder three years ago and wanted more involvement in technology development. With the genomics and bioinformatics revolution under way, Hamer had his pick of companies and cities. But rather than relocating to an urban biotech center in California or Massachusetts1,2, Hamer settled in Research Triangle Park. "There is a natural beauty to this area," he says. "The weather is a big pull and the cost of living is substantially less" than in competing biotech hotspots. Bounded by Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill-each with a major university-the Research Triangle represents the nation's fifth-largest biotech location, following Boston, San Francisco, San Diego, and Washington, D.C.3 A biotech bastion in a bucolic setting, the Triangle weds world-class academics and innovation with a gorgeous rural environment. In 2000, Money Magazine rated the region the best place to live in the South and the fourth-best place to live in the entire United States. Today, Hamer is vice president for research for Paradigm Genetics Inc., a 230-employee functional genomics and bioinformatics company with an agricultural focus. Paradigm is one of more than 140 biotech and high-tech companies in the 7,000-acre Research Triangle Park, the largest such enterprise in the country. Three major research institutions form the vertices of the imaginary triangle that gives the park its name: Duke University at Durham, the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill, and North Carolina State (NC State) University in Raleigh. A Good Mix Biopharmaceutical giant Glaxo-SmithKline employs over 4,500 in its Triangle corporate research facility. Bayer AG, Aventis CropScience, Novartis AG, and scores of other life sciences companies are within a short drive of the main office of the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and a large US Environmental Protection Agency office. Major high-tech companies in the park include IBM, Nortel Networks, and Cisco Systems. "The mix of the college towns plus the high-tech environment makes this area very, very nice," Hamer says. The tech friendly environment helps augment the region's 8- to 10-percent annual growth in biotech jobs, says Charles Hamner, president and CEO of the North Carolina Biotechnology Center, the country's first state-created business promotion enterprise, founded in 1981. The Center's latest survey identifies 134 biotech companies, 70 contract research organizations, and more than 150 biotech supply and support companies in the state, says Barry Teater, director of corporate communications. More than three-quarters of these organizations are housed in the Triangle. Together, they employ more than 30,000 workers and generate $2.2 billion in annual sales. In 20 years, Hamner expects 125,000 employees to generate $24 billion in sales. "The biotech discoveries tend to be made in the Triangle, but after a product is developed, the companies will go a short distance away to pick up a manufacturing workforce," he says. Several pharmaceutical companies operate manufacturing plants an hour or so outside the Triangle. Novo Nordisk Pharmaceutical Industries has a large industrial enzyme plant in the town of Franklinton, Wyeth-Lederle runs a vaccine production facility in Sanford, and GlaxoSmithKline maintains a large drug manufacturing plant in Zebulon. "Government, industry, and academia all work together," Hamner says. "We have a strong feeling of community with a lot more cooperation than competition." Paradigm's Hamer says the state's reputation for communal relationships among researchers helps him attract staff. "People see a lot of support for biotech by the state and a wealth of companies here. It's not difficult to recruit." The community atmosphere also helps lure talented academicians, says Steve Lommel, associate vice chancellor for research and a professor of plant pathology at NC State in Raleigh. "One of the reasons we can attract good faculty is all the collaborations available with the various companies," Lommel says. Many biotech companies offer industrial training programs for grad students and employ faculty part-time. "A lot of this is brokered and sponsored by the North Carolina Biotechnology Center," he says. The Center has provided more than $50 million in matching institutional development grants to local universities to recruit top-caliber staff and to equip specialized laboratories. Seven universities have recruited 46 professors through this program. One is Oliver Smithies, excellence professor in the department of pathology at UNC Chapel Hill, a recipient of the 2001 Lasker Foundation Basic Medical Research Award.4 "We think two or three of these [recruited] professors will win Nobel Prizes, over time," Hamner says, The Center also funds entrepreneurs as evidenced by the 63 startups that have received $10 million in seed money. Additionally, a new $26 million biotech venture capital fund is fully invested in 10 new biotech companies, says Daniel Egger, managing partner of Eno River Capital, the Durham firm that manages the fund. "We are up [in valuation] for the year and up overall," he says. "Fundamentally, we see that the strategy of investing in early stage life science companies in the southeast is working," he says. Athenix Corp., a Raleigh-based company focused on gene discovery for plant biotechnology, secured $8 million in its first round of private venture capital financing in September. Merix Bioscience, a cancer vaccine company in the Triangle, closed on $40 million in second-round VC funding earlier this year. But many Triangle businesses have been unlucky in securing private venture capital. Unlike their counterparts in Silicon Valley and Boston, North Carolina investors do not traditionally fund local start-ups. "Our roots are in textiles, furniture, and traditional banking," Taylor says. "The business culture here has never really exploited venture capital as a source of economic expansion." To focus the region's significant biotech strengths and the information technology power represented by such companies as IBM and the SAS Institute, with headquarters near the park, a new North Carolina Genomics and Bioinformatics Consortium was formed late last year. Members include the universities and the more than 50 bioscience and IT companies, foundations, and other nonprofit interest groups. "We are the best place in the United States in the combination of university resources in such close proximity, and the corporate capacity in biotechnology, software, and high-performance computing," says UNC President Molly Broad at an announcement ceremony. The major universities also are expanding their life sciences programs. The Wake Forest School of Medicine is engaged in a $67-million initiative, hiring more than 60 new faculty members to conduct research in genomics, cancer, pulmonary diseases, diabetes, and complementary (alternative) medicine. Duke University last year announced it would establish a $200- million Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy. And NC State's College of Veterinary Medicine hopes to find $500 million to expand into drug discovery, gene therapy, and other bioscience research to benefit humans and animals. Creating Creature Comforts The human friendly environment attracts scientists to the region today. "I'm from the [San Francisco] Bay Area and a lot of my positives with regard to living here are the lifestyle and cost of living," Lommel says. "You can have a faculty member's salary, or even a researcher's salary, and still have a very nice quality of life." The median salary and cash compensation for life scientists in the Triangle is only $51,100 compared with $61,700 in Washington, D.C. and $69,500 in San Francisco, according to a recent survey by The Scientist and Abbott, Langer & Associates, Inc.5 The average cost of living in the Triangle is only 2.7 percentage points higher than the U.S. average, however, compared with Washington where the cost of living is 12.9 points higher and San Francisco, where living expenses total whopping 79.8 percent higher. The economic benefits of the pastoral region help cement the Triangle's reputation as the North Carolina community of the future. Farmers, Hamner says, eventually will grow Triangle-improved crops, not only for food but also for vaccine and pharmaceutical production. "There's lots of rural areas in the state," he adds. "But they won't be the old-fashioned farming at all. They will become 'high-tech rural areas.'" Ted Agres (tagres@usa.net) is a freelance writer based in Washington D.C. References 1. M. Watanabe, "Boston-Worcester biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries heat up life sciences employment market," The Scientist, 15[4]:27, Feb. 19, 2001. 2. H. Black, "San Francisco Bay Area biotechs keep on cooking," The Scientist, 15[10]:26, May 14, 2001. 3. T. Agres, "A capital locale for life sciences," The Scientist, 15[15]:30, July 23, 2001. 4. B. Maher, "Lasker Foundation honors five," The Scientist, 15[19]:16, Oct. 1, 2001. 5. P. Park, "The long road to riches in the life sciences," The Scientist, 15[18]:30, Sept. 17, 2001. Supplemental Materials Map of Research Triangle Park, NC, 2 images (61K and 23K) Graceful Southern Living

The Biotech Triangle

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