2007 Minnesota Biosciences

The era of biology is upon us. States around the country and countries across the globe are taking aggressive steps to broaden and boost their economies by staking out their share of the emerging bioscience industry.

“The impact to our lives over the next 20 years, because of the breakthroughs in biology, are going to be comparable to the changes in our lives over the last 20 years due to computers,” says Dale Wahlstrom, CEO of the BioBusiness Alliance of Minnesota, a St. Louis Park-based nonprofit that was created in 2004 to help shape the state’s bioscience policy. “Just like computers invaded every industry out there, engaged every part of society, the same is going to be true with biology.”

To be sure, Minnesota has been anything but an idle onlooker in the global biobusiness build-up. Between 2000 and 2006, the state has invested $420 million in the biosciences, according to the Minnesota Department of Employment & Economic Development (DEED). This year, the state legislature approved about another $90.2 million for bioscience initiatives.

Even so, some in the industry warn that several other states—Massachusetts, California, Texas, North Carolina, Michigan and Wisconsin, for example—are executing ambitious, long-term biobusiness strategies that threaten to leave less aggressive investors in their wake. In Massachusetts, for example, state government recently approved $1 billion over 10 years for its already formidable biotechnology industry.

“I’m very grateful the state has done what it’s done,” says Mark Paller, co-director of the Minnesota Partnership for Biotechnology and Medical Genomics, which last January opened its new research facility, built with $21.7 million in state bonding, on the Mayo Clinic campus in Rochester. “But [Minnesota] still just doesn’t invest in biosciences in big ways relative to some other states.”

Todd Reubold is the assistant director of the Initiative for Renewable Energy and the Environment (IREE), a University of Minnesota-based program that has received $20 million over five years from the state. “We’re keeping pace,” he adds. “We’re not ahead of the game, but we’re in the game, which is certainly good.”

As is the case with many emerging industries, the biosciences are largely dependent on the public-sector dollars that fund University-level discoveries. Those, in turn, inspire private-sector investment and, ultimately, commercialization.

To that end, state government has allocated the lion’s share of its biosciences dollars to building new facilities at the University of Minnesota, far and away the state’s largest public research institution, as well as other campuses throughout the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system.

In addition, the state helped fund the launch and ongoing development of the Minnesota Partnership for Biotechnology and Medical Genomics, a one-of-a-kind collaboration between the University of Minnesota and the Mayo Clinic, the state’s other heavyweight research center, a partnership that University of Minnesota’s Tim Mulcahy, vice president for research, calls “a powerful one-two punch” from which many amazing innovations have emerged. This year, the legislature also extended its financial support for IREE, and has committed $467,000—with $1.75 million more to come—to the BioBusiness Alliance.

“One of the [Alliance’s] primary objectives,” says Wahlstrom, “is to create a roadmap, making information available to decision makers [to help them determine] where to invest for the future.”

As for the past, here’s a look at some of the state’s key biosciences investments over the past six years.